Yahoo's acquisition of Maktoob posed an interesting challenge to Google, whose approach has been slow and calculated. The truth of the matter is, there are millions of Arabic-speaking Internet users who are not interested in English-based content. So, Yahoo bought their way in.

Google appears to have gone their own way and decided to build their own base. The Egyptian Egabat (egabat.google.com) is the answer. As a product, it is completely uninteresting. It offers nothing that is new or exciting, except that it is an Arabic-only product. In fact, it's so Arabic it's Egyptian.

Now I understand that Google recruits a lot of their Middle East staff from Egypt, but the Egyptian branding of their first Arabic-only product is curious, to put it mildly. It is either Google doesn't understand the region or that their staff are taking this as an opportunity to highlight Egypt's importance in the region.

Wael Ghonim (@ghonim) tweeted back to me saying:

@elzubeir I'm the product manager for Google إجابات .. thats the official name .. both egabat.google.com and ejabat.google.com works :)

That is great, except that it defaults to the Egyptian branding. If Google's goal is to attract Egyptian Internet users, then that's fine. However, if you are actually trying to attract the entire Middle East's Internet population, think again.

Here is a hint: We are not all friends. Any dialect-specific service is sure to distract from the actual offering. Why would you create such an unnecessary distraction if your target is the Middle East and not just the Egyptian market? Don't get me wrong, I think the Egyptian market alone is worth targeting. I am just not getting the sense that Google realizes or acknowledges this.

Dialects aside, it appears that the war for the Middle Eastern eyeballs is on. Yahoo called it and Google answered. This is going to be a very interesting period.