The World Bank estimates that there are 320 million Arabic speakers around the globe, yet less than one per cent of online content is written in their language despite a vibrant Arabic blogosphere.

We have a big opportunity to meet this growing demand, and we think Yahoo!, building on Maktoobs local expertise, brings the scale and heft to draw many more people online in the region and we plan to give them compelling reasons to log on.Financial terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed. However, Yahoo has set up an information site about the deal, which will be updated accordingly.