Arabic GMail: Screwing the Niche!

Mon, 05 Jun 2006 18:38:00 GMT

It didn't come as a surprise to me, nor -I think- to Arab free email services like Maktoob and Gawab. In today's evolving web, and amidst the heightened competition to dominate the next age of computing, this was bound to happen.

GMail caused quite a stir in the webmail market when it came out, both because of the experience it provided and its 1GB storage. Knee-jerk reactions rippled across the web with everyone raising their storage limits to 1GB. Some actually thought it would be "innovative" to offer 2GB… It was really funny to watch. I hope the brainstorming meetings they held in order to come up with these solutions did not take more than 10 minutes.

The reactions of Arabic email providers reveals an alarming fact; That Arab users don't use them because they provide better value, nor even because they are in Arabic (which is worse).

Arab web companies have always lived in their own comfort zone feeling they have enough barriers to entry that prevent foreign services from taking a bite out of their market share. This feeling in turn provided no motivation to innovate, take risks or push the limits of creativity. The niche which was once an advantage has turned into a wall blocking the exit rather than the entrance, thus putting them always on the defense.

Is there hope, or is it too late?

Arabic e-mail services have been virtually dormant for the past few years with Maktoob sitting too comfortably at the very top and Gawab –for a reason I can’t understand- not competing fiercely to snatch a larger piece of the market.

Just recently –two weeks ago- Gawab released a major update to their service, all focused on enhancing user experience. Gawab's "answer" to the competition was SPA "Single Page Application", which is an extreme expression for what is known and "AJAX" not as fancy sounding.

Now really, AJAX is a nice buzz word, but it is no silver bullet. Incorporating AJAX into your apps will not help you beat the competition. GMail used AJAX and now everyone is doing it, so I can hardly call this an achievement. We expected more from Gawab, being the smaller player they are expected to have more motivation to innovate.

Maktoob have just started releasing a their own facelift after many years of having a somewhat fragmented look due to the large nature of their network which was amplified by several web site acquisitions they made over the past two years. I hope these changes are a reflection of a change of mentality on the inside and that it will soon reflect on aspects other than just the user interface.

Google's entry into Arabic email is a wakeup call for everyone involved in the Arabic web scene, and I hope this time, the answer won’t simply be "A Bigger Gun".

Laith Zraikat: Google

Arabic GMail: Screwing the Niche!