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UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 CAIRO 006035 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR NEA/ELA AND EB/CIP 
USAID FOR ANE/MEA MCCLOUD 
USTR FOR SAUMS/AUGEROT/MCHALE/NEUREITER 
COMMERCE FOR 4520/ITA/ANESA/TALAAT 
FCC FOR INTERNATIONAL BUREAU/COOPER 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: ECON ECPS EINT EINV ETRD KCOR KGIT PHUM EG CH
SUBJECT: GOOGLE'S VIEWS ON EGYPT'S ECONOMIC ENVIRONMENT, 
INTERNET CONTROLS 
 
Sensitive But Unclassified, Not For Internet Distribution 
 
¶1.  (SBU) Summary: On September 14, Google,s Regional 
Manager for the Middle East and North Africa Sherif Iskander 
gave econoff an overview of Google,s business in the region 
and opined optimistically about the improvement of Egypt,s 
business environment and economy, though with some 
reservations.  Google,s ambitious plans, although still in 
the preliminary stages, could eventually contribute to 
increased Internet usage among Arabic speakers and a more 
vibrant e-business in the region, with ensuing economic 
benefits.  Iskander also discussed Google's approach to 
complying with Egyptian Internet filtering laws.  End Summary. 
 
----------------------------------- 
Google,s Ambitious Middle East Plan 
----------------------------------- 
 
¶2.  (SBU) On September 14, econoff met with Sherif Iskander, 
Google,s Regional Manager for the Middle East and North 
Africa, to discuss Google,s business in the region, Egypt,s 
economic reforms, and the opportunities and challenges that 
lie ahead.  Google is just beginning its operations in the 
region and is focused on fostering small- and medium-sized 
enterprises (SMEs), the advertisements of which make up the 
bread and butter of Google,s revenue.  Since less than five 
percent of Egyptian SMEs have Internet access and less than 
one percent of the Internet,s content is in Arabic, Google 
is embarking on projects to increase Internet access among 
its core customer group and provide a greater amount of 
Arabic content. In order to increase local Internet use, 
Google plans to provide software that is totally Web-based 
and low-maintenance, thus alleviating costs for businesses 
that may not even have a computer.  With this type of 
software, businesses would be able to use Google,s products 
from a local Internet caf or anywhere else. 
 
¶3.  (SBU) Where the company might make more of a difference, 
however, is in making Arabic content on the Internet more 
prevalent and accessible.  It has already launched Gmail in 
Arabic, which according to Iskander is the first e-mail 
application for Arabic speakers requiring no knowledge of 
English.  Additionally, the company has a research team 
working on a new context-based method of machine translation 
between English and Arabic, a notoriously difficult problem. 
Iskander was optimistic that Google,s team would eventually 
make translations at least intelligible enough to do 
business, though the time frame for this was unspecified. 
Google plans to link its translation engine to its search 
software, so that a search in Arabic returns not only Arabic 
sites but also those translated from English, and eventually 
from other languages.  (Comment: Lack of Arabic content is 
one of the primary hindrances cited by the business community 
to increasing e-business in Egypt.  End Comment.) 
 
---------------------------------- 
Upbeat about improving economy ... 
---------------------------------- 
 
¶4.  (SBU) Iskander talked at length about what he sees as 
recent improvements in Egypt's business environment and the 
opportunities and challenges that lie ahead.  Officials in 
the Nazif government have been much more accessible to him 
and his colleagues than those of previous governments.  He 
was also impressed with the increased transparency and amount 
of public information about several recent issues, including 
the 3rd mobile license, the upcoming Omar Effendi sale, and 
the investigation into recent train accidents.  According to 
Iskander, prior to 2004 all of these developments would have 
been shrouded in secrecy.  Perhaps most telling is that prior 
to 2004, Iskander himself was conducting almost all of his 
business based in Dubai because of the poor business 
environment in Egypt.  Iskander was particularly upbeat about 
the IT/telecom sector's prospects.  In addition to the 3rd 
mobile license, Egypt has become a more popular destination 
for call centers, including those for Microsoft and Oracle. 
Egypt's call centers are doing well because of high English 
language standards and because they do not try to fool 
customers into thinking that their employees are actually in 
the U.S., a practice that apparently backfired in India. 
 
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CAIRO 00006035  002 OF 002 
 
 
... but wary of fundamentalists and lack of vision 
--------------------------------------------- ----- 
 
¶5.  (SBU) Iskander sees the biggest challenges to continued 
economic growth to be two-fold: opposition under a religious 
banner from people not yet benefiting from reform projects, 
and a lack of planning in long-term growth strategy.  He 
believes that Egyptians who do not see immediate benefits 
from economic reforms may use religion as an excuse for 
opposition.  If economic reforms progress far enough, 
however, and reach deep enough into all levels of society, 
then this opposition would eventually disappear.  Regarding 
long-term growth strategy, Iskander thought that many of the 
current GOE projects are aimed at "plugging the holes" in a 
broken system without adequate thought for the future, though 
the IT/telecom sector was slightly better off in this regard. 
 
---------- 
Censorship 
---------- 
 
¶6.  (SBU) Iskander prefaced his comments on censorship by 
stressing that Google is a very moral company, and does not 
place advertisements for pornography or alcohol (except for 
wine).  He also stressed that Google must comply with host 
country laws wherever it operates, but explained that Google 
does not host any of its services from Egypt, but rather from 
the U.S.  In this way, the company does not implement 
censoring mechanisms itself, but rather allows Egyptian ISPs 
to censor locally as they do with all Internet content. 
Google thus complies with censorship regulations without 
doing the actual censorship itself. 
 
¶7.  (SBU) Econoff queried Iskander on why Google did not take 
this approach in China, where the company has been criticized 
for censoring its content.  Iskander responded that unlike 
Egypt, Google needed to host its Chinese services from China 
due to the way the Chinese are connected to the Internet. 
The company was thus required to implement censorship itself. 
 However, Iskander said that Google has publicly given a 
different reason for why it hosts its Chinese services from 
China, namely that the sheer size of the Chinese market 
requires locally-hosted services for efficiency.  Iskander 
said the company gives this explanation publicly so that no 
other countries (read: Saudi Arabia) would try to close their 
Internet off as China has done. 
 
¶8.  (SBU) Comment: Google is walking a fine line with this 
approach to censorship, neither endorsing nor pushing back 
against limits on freedom of information.  The strong 
blowback from its censorship in China may have pushed the 
company to try this different approach.  Additionally, 
because the Arab market is still so small, Google loses 
little in efficiency by hosting its Arabic services outside 
of the region.  End comment. 
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