Yahoo! Inc, owner of the second- most popular US Internet search engine, has agreed to buy Arabiclanguage Internet venture Maktoob.com Inc as it seeks to enter the Middle East market.
The company, which announced the acquisition in a press conference in Dubai on Monday, did not disclose the value of the agreement.
Yahoo!, which agreed to join forces with Microsoft Corp last month to challenge Google Inc, is investing in its own Internet-search service and the purchase of Maktoob provides it with an entry point to a market that includes 22 countries.
"Maktoob is the ultimate Web-based company of the Middle East region because it started before the dot-com boom of the 1990s and survived the crash,"Maktoob co-founder Fadi Ghandour said in an interview.
Founded in 2000, Maktoob is the largest portal in the Arab world and owns on-line auction, search, entertainment and matrimonial websites, and sells on-line payment cards.
In 2007, Abraaj Capital Ltd, the Dubai-based buyout company managing more than $6 billion, sold its 40% stake in the Amman-based Maktoob.com to Tiger Global Management LLC, a US-based investment company.
Maktoob is ranked as the 156 most popular website in the world over the past three months with about 0.47% of global Internet users visiting the site,according to Alexa Internet Inc, a Web traffic-monitoring company owned by Amazon.com Inc.
There were about 37 million Internet users in the Arab world at the end of 2008, according to Arab Advisers Group,a research, analysis and consulting company focused on communications and media.
"An acquisition by Yahoo may make sense because it would add a large base of Internet Arab users to whom it can sell ads and tailor services to further cement its leadership in the region,"said Jawad Abassi, founder and general manager of Arab Advisers Group.
"Yahoo may even help solve Maktoobs ongoing problem of not being a leader in any of the segments its involved in."
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