Google Pledges to Support Business Activities in Saudi Arabia

The business sector has witnessed a challenging phase during the covid-19 pandemic, and many small businesses and individuals have been affected.

Google unveiled Wednesday an initiative to hasten the economic recovery of the MENA region through digital transformation. The Grow Stronger with Google program will offer tools, training and financial grants worth more than $13 million to empower local businesses and jobseekers, with a special focus in Saudi Arabia on supporting business activities in the fields of retail, tourism, and entrepreneurship.

According to the Arab Monetary fund, around six million jobs are at risk in the Arab world, and the most available vacancies in the Kingdom require applied digital skills.

As part of its regional program, Google pledges to help more than one million people and businesses in the MENA region to learn digital skills and grow their businesses by the end of 2021. The company will provide grants from Google.org, the company's philanthropic arm, and loans worth $4 million, as well as grants and advertising credits of more than $9 million for governments and businesses.

Asharq Al-Awsat attended a special digital meeting with Lino Kataruzzi, general manager of Google in MENA, in which he explained the reasons why Google launched this project, the targeted groups, and how digital opportunities can contribute to a stronger return of people, business activities, and societies in Saudi Arabia and the region.

He stressed that digital tools have become a mean of saving many people during the crisis, and that Google helps people acquire new skills, find jobs, and enhance the presence of commercial activities on the Internet, especially those working in the areas of retail and tourism, because they are most affected by the crisis.

He also stressed that Google is optimistic about the future of the region, and has great confidence that cooperation with local partners will accelerate the pace of economic recovery by taking advantage of digital transformation.

The "Go Strong with Google" program in Saudi Arabia includes 3 main areas, which are digital and cloud skills training, business guidance and direction, and digitization of local business activities.

As for the first area, Google will ink partnerships with local authorities, such as the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (the Digital Giving Initiative), the Ministry of Tourism and Wadi Makkah, through which it will provide training on digital marketing to more than 50,000 students and commercial activities in the Kingdom, and will host digital training for technology companies.

As for the second area (mentoring and directing business activities), Google will launch the Google for Startups Accelerator program to support local entrepreneurs, so that the first group will include up to 15 startups from the region to participate in a 3-month program that provides guidance, direction and assistance from expert advisors. The company will also provide $1.1 million in grants from Google.org to Mercy Corps, the Arab Tourism Organization, and Youth Business International to direct business activities and entrepreneurs across the region.

The third area (digitizing local commercial activities in Saudi Arabia) includes the launch of the Market Finder service to help local businesses identify new markets and acquire global customers. It will also grant all retailers in Saudi Arabia, whether they are Google advertisers or not, the right to access the brand Google Shopping tab to list their products at no cost, which helps them communicate with more customers, in addition to listing 100,000 local businesses in Saudi Arabia on "My Business on Google" and providing the owners of these businesses with digital skills in partnership with Saudi Post.

The listing will also include 50,000 companies in the UAE in partnership with the Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Google has trained 300,000 students, handicraft artists and commercial activities on digital marketing in the region in partnership with local authorities and institutions, such as the Ministry of Youth and Sports, the Egyptian Federation of Tourist Chambers, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (the Digital Giving Initiative), the Ministry of Tourism in Saudi Arabia, the Nama Foundation for the Advancement of Women, and the Mohammed bin Rashid Foundation for the Development of Small and Medium Enterprises in the UAE, in addition to supporting thousands of small businesses with limited resources by providing financial loans worth $3 million in cooperation with the Kiva Foundation, a digital platform to connect lenders and borrowers around the world.

In 2018, the company announced the launch of "Skills from Google," a training program on digital skills for Arabic speakers, from which about one million Arab youth have so far benefited.

You can visit the “Go big with Google” program at grow.google-intl-mena.

Thousands of people swooned in a dark conference hall that felt more like a rock concert when a Microsoft product manager demonstrated the company's latest feature: how to sum numbers in Excel, with the click of a button.

"It was literally like Mick Jagger walked out," said Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft's consumer chief marketing officer, who started as an intern.

That was more than 30 years ago. On Friday, the day Microsoft turned 50, the company's leaders and staff gathered at its Redmond headquarters to remember the software maker's glory days while trumpeting what they hope will bring it into the future: more powerful artificial intelligence.

Copilot, Microsoft's AI assistant, is gaining a host of new features to make it more proactive. The version for consumers will start remembering personal facts about them. It will offer birthday reminders or support ahead of a presentation, or consumers can opt out, Mehdi said in an interview.

Copilot likewise will personalize podcasts and shopping recommendations, and it will let consumers task their AI to book events for them, or send a friend a gift while checking in for guidance. "It frees you up," said Mehdi.

Microsoft is hardly first to roll out action-taking or "agentic" software. As with rival systems, the AI will work best on popular sites where Microsoft has done some behind-the-scenes technical work, like with 1-800-Flowers.com and OpenTable, Mehdi said.

Mehdi recalled days when Microsoft was smaller and growing. He said CEO Bill Gates could devour three books' worth of information from one day to the next, at a time when the co-founder still worked on Microsoft software. Mehdi watched Steve Ballmer, Gates' eventual successor, chant "developers, developers, developers!" in a sweat-drenched shirt to rouse a crowd into the ".net" era.

Microsoft went from top of the pack to badly bruised in a high-profile lawsuit that US antitrust enforcers brought against it in 1998. Years later, younger companies and startups, among them Alphabet and ChatGPT creator OpenAI, beat it to the punch on key AI developments.

Satya Nadella, Microsoft's current CEO, is not standing still. The leader who turned Microsoft into the No. 2 cloud powerhouse challenged his executives at an internal summit this week, recalled Mehdi: "How do we rethink the way that we build the software?"

Microsoft is iterating on its chatbot technology in a crowded field that includes Elon Musk's xAI and Anthropic. It has added Copilot to its heavily used productivity suites for business while giving consumers a distinctive version.

"It's warm; it has that personality," said Mehdi. Some users have taken to this, while others find it asks too many questions, he said.

"When we get to now be more personalized, we can start to get smarter," Mehdi said. "We're part way through that journey."

Google Pledges to Support Business Activities in Saudi Arabia