A Saudi Arabian and German plan to launch an Arabic search engine could help develop a potential-laden Arabic internet market, writes Reuters. The "Sawafi" engine, planned for the last quarter of 2006, is aiming to do for the Arab world what the Baidu search enginehas done in China - challenge the power of Google, Yahoo and MSN (all of which offer only a basic level of Arabic search).
The German tech firm Seekport unveiled the project with Saudi partner Integrated Technical Solutions in Riyadh this week. Sawafi, registered in Dubai, is targeting users in the Arab world of 280 million people, where internet penetration is thus far low.
However, large expatriate Arab communities in Europe and North America would likely be among the first adopters.
