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Yahoo! Acquires License to Yamli Technology to Power Services
Published May 28, 2012
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Yahoo! announced that it has acquired a license to Yamli’s transliteration technology, to be integrated across a number of its products and services. This comes as part of Yahoo!’s focus on developing solutions tailored for the Middle East and North Africa region, and will allow Yahoo! Maktoob to further develop the technology and extend it to a wider audience across its network.
Yamli was founded in 2007 by Lebanese entrepreneurs Habib Haddad and Imad Jureidini, who came up with the idea of a “Smart Arabic Keyboard” that allows users to type Arabic without an Arabic keyboard or if they are not used to using one. They created a technology based on a real-time transliteration engine which converts words typed with Latin characters to their Arabic equivalent. Yahoo! Maktoob’s product is called “3arrebni” (Arabize me).
Ahmed Nassef, Vice President and Managing Director, Yahoo! Maktoob, said, “Yamli is a pioneering startup that created a clever solution for a real user need and built it on a robust technology, which remains best in class. By acquiring a license to the technology, we will be able to marry it with our capabilities to further develop it and scale it to a wider audience through deep integration with our products and across multiple platforms. When looking at opportunities, we seek innovations that we expect to add significant value to our offering, and Yamli, with its technology that brings exceptional accuracy and seamless usability, was a natural fit.”
Habib Haddad, Co-Founder of Yamli and who now runs Wamda, an enabling platform for entrepreneurs in the MENA region, said, “Yahoo! established a big success story within the entrepreneurship ecosystem in the region when it acquired Maktoob, and it is great to see it continue to support and work with startups. This deal represents a milestone for Yamli, which over the years has been growing at an incredible rate. More than 3.5 billion words have been typed with Yamli to date, at a rate of 150 million words per month.”
As a first phase, “3arrebni” has launched as a standalone destination page (http://maktoob.3arrebni.yahoo.com/), and will soon be accessible through Yahoo! Maktoob’s homepage. The following months will see the product seamlessly integrated with Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo! Mail in Arabic, Yahoo! Search, and in areas requiring user generated input such as Yahoo! Maktoob Forums and in the comments sections of Yahoo! Maktoob’s media properties, including News.
Nassef added, “With the introduction of “3arrebni” across our products and platforms, we are enriching Arabic content online by enabling participation that brings Arabic characters to the forefront, which often times would have been done using the English language or Latin characters. We’re very excited to be bringing this service to our users, and potentially introducing this solution to a whole new audience for the first time.”
About Yamli:
Yamli’s mission
Yamli's mission is to empower Arabic users on the web.
We develop products that solve everyday problems Arabic users face on the internet, making in the process the Arabic web experience a more enjoyable one. Today we offer two main products: the Smart Arabic Keyboard, and Yamli Arabic Search.
The Smart Arabic Keyboard allows users to type Arabic without an Arabic keyboard, from within their web browser. This technology is based on a real-time transliteration engine which converts words typed with Latin characters to their closest Arabic equivalent. Yamli Arabic Search is a search engine focused on providing more relevant search results for an Arabic query by expanding it to its most frequently used Latin representations.
How did Yamli get started?
The idea for Yamli came to us in the summer of 2006, during the war in Lebanon. Most of the up-to-date information about the war was available only in Arabic. Getting fresh news meant typing search queries in Arabic, which is not easy without an Arabic keyboard. At the same time, we were communicating with friends and family in Arabic, but using Latin characters (Arabizi).
This is when the idea for Yamli was born. Taking an existing and widespread skill, Arabizi, to enable users to type real Arabic words. We set out to see if converting Arabizi to Arabic was feasible with enough accuracy to be useful. After several months of work, Yamli.com was born on November 15, 2007.
We quickly realized that there were many unsolved problems that faced the Arabic language on the web and prevented its expansion, and decided to make it as our mission to find solutions.
The word Yamli is inspired by the Arabic verb "يُملي" which comes from the noun "إملاء" referring to dictation or transcription of spoken text.
About Yahoo!
Yahoo! is the premier digital media company, creating deeply personal digital experiences that keep more than half a billion people connected to what matters most to them, across devices and around the globe. In November 2009, Yahoo! acquired Maktoob—the Middle East’s leading online community portal. Yahoo! Maktoob provides millions of users in the Middle East with locally relevant content on the Internet in English and Arabic, combined with the best tools and services from Yahoo! properties. For advertisers, Yahoo! Maktoob delivers the unique combination of Science + Art + Scale (SAS) to help businesses reach the consumers who matter most to them. Through a host of targeted, engaging, and highly personalized advertising offerings, Yahoo! Maktoob develops lasting relationships between brands and their consumers through relevant and interactive content.
Posted by
VMD - [Virtual Marketing Department]
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