Google Targets Africa

The search giant is betting that it can become synonymous with the Internet in Africa.

Google Inc., is betting that Africa will play a very important role in it's future Internet domination. The search giant has setup shop and is hiring in countries like South Africa, Egypt, Kenya, Senegal, Rwanda and Nigeria.

Africa's 955,206,348 people represents 14% of the worlds population but only 5% of Africans have access to the Internet. That's represents only 3.3% of the world's Internet users, but Google sees hope for its long-term prospects in Africa.

Google has chosen to use local partnership's with ISP's and telecoms companies to carry it's services like GMail and Doc's, giving the a cut of advertising revenue.

Google acknowledges that it's in "incubation phase" in Africa, and the results thus far are still underwhelming. By late February, only 8,600 people had registered with local Kenyan partner Safaricom.com, far less than 1% of it's users.

Google is indeed looking ahead to future area's where it can grow it's advertising revenue as it become a more international company. In it's last financial quarter Google said it's international revenue represented 51% of total revenue for the first time.

Source: fastcompany.com