Google announces first Middle East event. Calls it Google Day.

We’re not sure when or where. But it’s official: Google is hosting its first ever Google Day in the Middle East and North Africa.

It seems that the 2.0 buzz word is still in. Arabia 2.0 is their slogan for the event.

I’ve personally never heard of Google Day before, but they’ve managed to gather quite a large bunch of people. Over 150 CEOs, CMOs and government leaders are said to be part of this event to “imagine the future of Arabia”.

Google is known to host some workshops in the Middle East, but they’ve all been expensive to attend and end up being some sales and media presentations on how to buy more AdWords and teach people what search is all about.

It’s worth mentioning that Google has recently enhanced their search to support Arabic in a way that has not been implemented before.

Could all this hype be just about more partnerships and some maps or is Google finally realizing that Yahoo’s acquisition of Maktoob and their fresh Arabic search engine is for real?

Yahoo/Maktoob claim to host one third of the region’s email accounts. That’s quite a lump sum that could gear these users to use Yahoo’s tools for search or Bing – whenever that happens. This is worth millions of dollars in advertising money that Google is missing out on. But that’s just one idea.

Could it be music related? Nokia seems to be the only international store that has a good collection of legal music from the region. There’s an opportunity there. But with CEOs and CMOs?!

Search, maps, advertising and music are all on table. We can speculate till the cows come home. I guess we’ve got to first wait for a confirmed date and venue.

Via Google Arabia Blog