Google Inc. has announced that it is setting up a branch in Israel as part of the expansion of its international activities. To handle its operation, Google appointed Meir Brand as Israel country manager and the company’s first employee in Israel. He previously worked for AOL and Microsoft.
Google appointed Meir Brand as the director of its Israel office, a Harvard Business school graduate who until recently worked for Microsoft. Apart from MSN’s Israeli site, the country’s leading Internet portals are currently all locally operated and include the Ynet, Walla and NRG news sites, as well as the Yellow Pages and the Nana and Tapuz portals.
Brand previously worked in Microsoft Israel’s marketing department as the manager of the small business sector. He also worked for ICQ, for Internet search company Excite, and for Booz, Allen and Hamilton.
The company, which has been active in Israel since 2002, said the opening of the office would enable the company to expand its services, providing Israeli internet surfers, advertisers and partners with a search tool and advertising services via its search engine.
According to TNS Teleseker’s periodic survey of Internet users, approximately 2.3 million Israelis surf the Net every day. The overall number of Israeli surfers is approximately 3.4 million. TNS’s latest survey, which was published last June, reported that 66.4 percent of all Israelis who surf the Web had visited the Google site during the previous week – an increase of 11.5% from June 2004.
Google’s announcement that it will soon establish an office in Israel has launched a wave of speculation in the local media about how the world’s most used search engine will affect the Internet market here. Google’s Hebrew-language search engine, which has been operating for the past three years, is considered to be the country’s most frequently used tool for finding information on-line.
The company plans to build a content-rich portal at www.google.co.il similar to local sites in other countries. It is therefore seeking out Israeli advertisers. The current website is only a search engine and does not provide e-mail, price comparisons, news links, or local information, like Google.com does.
Google had not yet authorized Brand to speak to the media. Nevertheless, if the company’s local office launches the kinds of services it offers on its American and European sites, http://www.google.co.il could become an even more serious competitor to both MSN.co.il and to its Israeli counterparts.
Google’s establishment of a local office, however, is intended to change the nature of its operations in Israel and, as a result, is expected to impact the surfing habits of local Internet users.
According to one source in the Israeli Internet industry, while the technological capabilities of Google’s search engine by far surpass those offered by local portals such as Walla, a future Israeli Google News service would offer relatively few advantages for the Israeli user due to the limited number of on-line news sources in Hebrew.
More importantly, however, the development of a local Google portal may soon enable Google to obtain a significant part of the local on-line advertising market.
Most of the on-line advertising conducted on Google takes the form of Internet links placed in small boxes alongside the results of a search for a related subject. A search for clothing stores on the company’s existing Israeli search engine, for instance, may trigger an advertisement for the Web site of the American clothing company The Gap.
According to Alon Israeli, an on-line marketing expert based in Tel Aviv, Google’s advertising strategy, which is distinctly different from that of local Internet portals, may well offer it a significant advantage in competing for local advertisers.
The company plans on initially hiring employees with advertising connections to Israeli companies and will continue to hire and expand from there.