Not long after Yahoo closed their offices in Amman and Cairo, they have now announced that they will be closing the doors on their Dubai office.
Communicate Middle East stated that the option of closing down Dubai has been on the cards for a while, since January 2015 when it made 50% cuts in staff.
Hussein Freijeh the managing director of Yahoo was contacted for his thoughts but declined to comment at this time. He stated that he wasn’t authorized to do so but directed questions to Yahoo’s PR Company. The only statement given was as follows: “Yesterday we contracted our Dubai based office to inform them that we had made the difficult decision to close down the workplace by the end of April as part of Yahoo’s long term vision to streamline our company and prepare the business for long-term growth and development. We really appreciate all of our employees’ dedication and hard work”.
The magazine retaliated by replying, “Whilst Yahoo pretends to play mum, and people can’t help but question how removing itself from the Arab world is a wise move”.
Another concern relates to the problem of how Yahoo would sell its ad inventory to ad agencies in the region that are majorly situated in Dubai.
It’s now no secret that Yahoo’s choice to acquire Maktoob for approximately 175 million USD was a disaster. They failed to see any benefits from the take over, this was unsurprisingly given most of Maktoob traffic was from Forums, which made a hit with Google search algorithm updates e.g. panda.
Despite Arabcrunch hailing the Maktoob Yahoo deal, people have put the pieces together and now have a clearer perspective. This has caused many to turn around and say that the takeover of Maktoob by Yahoo was in fact a political choice rather than a levelheaded business decision.