First for the big news, it’s not in Dubai! The online media giant Google has opened its first office in the region in Cairo, Egypt.

The branch has been set-up in to support and promote recently launched Arabic language versions of Google News, Gmail and Google Earth.

However, we at mediaME believe that the main aim is to increase revenues from Arab clients for Google’s advertising solutions, and maybe even launch an Arabic-language AdSense service.

Here’s a quote we got from ITP.net about the launch:

The president of Google’s operations in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), Nikesh Arora, said: “MENA is a region with 300 million people, speaking the same language. We hope our products, and the Internet as a whole, will bring useful and beneficial tools to our Arabic users. We can see potential for industries like tourism and travel which are important to Egypt’s economy.”

According to the Madar research cited by Google, internet use is growing rapidly in the MENA region, with 12.4 million users expected online in Egypt alone by the year 2010.

Via [ AdBlogArabia ]