Since we launched Google web search ten years ago, we've been steadily adding many of the world's major domains, from
google.co.uk to
google.com.mx. This year we've launched six new domains in the Middle East and Africa, bringing our total number of domains to 30 in Africa and 12 across the Arabic world, among them Benin, Lebanon, and Madagascar.
Here's how we go about it. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) maintains a list of available domains worldwide and we've steadily been offering Google pages on ICANN domains as they've become available. That's because domains aren't simply a way to provide an easy-to-remember name in place of long, numeric IP addresses; they are also a small first step towards our larger aim of providing local services to users around the world, wherever they happen to be.
Of course, providing a domain is only a start, and since the beginning we've been working on many services to personalize Google for users based on location and region. For instance, although both France and Belgium have Francophone users and could theoretically use the same French-language domain, people in France who search for "Cote d'Or" are likely to be searching for the
French region of that name; in Belgium they're more likely to be searching for the
Belgian chocolate maker.
Today we're adding an additional domain to our list, google.ps. The new domain will give Arabic-speaking users in the Palestinian Territories, who use Palestinian ISPs, access to Google in Arabic--and eventually, access to more locally-relevant content. With the launch of
google.ps, we bring the total number of Google domains worldwide to more than 160.
We see domains as the first step towards a much larger goal of making the web more accessible and relevant for our users, and part of our vision to make all of our products available in the world's
top 40 most spoken languages. We plan to continue rolling out more domains in the coming months, particularly in Africa, so stay tuned.
Posted by William Kanaan, Engineering Program Manager
