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Google Contributed Billions To The Middle East Economy In 2021
Google contributed over $3 billion to the economy in both the UAE and Saudi Arabia in 2021 alone.
For better or worse, Google is at the heart of the modern internet. Services like Google Search, Gmail, YouTube, Google Maps, and Google Drive are used by billions of people around the world, helping them find useful information, establish an online presence, and accomplish their goals, among many other things.
Interested to see how much value it contributes to the Middle East economy, the tech giant commissioned independent consultancy Public First to explore how Google’s products helped people, businesses, and workers, and the findings are astonishing: Google contributed over $3 billion to the economy in both the UAE and Saudi Arabia in 2021 alone.
To be more precise, Google helped support an estimated 12.2 billion SAR (or $3.25 billion) in economic activity in Saudi Arabia and AED 11.3 billion (or $3.08 billion) in the UAE.
In both countries, e-commerce played a vital role in Google’s contributions. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, people across the Middle East were fairly reluctant to shop online. Since the first wave of pandemic lockdowns restricted access to physical stores, e-commerce penetration more than doubled both in Saudi Arabia (from 5% to 10%) and the UAE (from 5.6% to 12.1%).
Other drivers of Google’s contributions include the company’s huge developer ecosystem or the various content creators it helped propel to stardom, such as the Iraqi creator known as Chef Shaheen, whose YouTube channel has around 2.4 million subscribers.
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“We see from the numbers that the content creator economy is growing massively…same thing for developers,” says Anthony Nakache, Google’s Managing Director in the Middle East and North Africa. “All signs are showing that there is a growth in the [digital] economy — all components are actually growing.”
On the flip side, any economy that becomes largely dependent on a single company can find itself in an unpleasant situation if the company stops being able to deliver its services, just like when the massive Facebook outage shook the internet in 2021.
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Deezer Says AI Tracks Now Make Up 44% Of Uploads
The streamer says nearly 75,000 AI-made songs now hit its platform each day, even as those tracks account for just 1% to 3% of plays.
AI-generated music is becoming a real headache for music platforms, according to Deezer. The streaming service says it now receives nearly 75,000 AI-made tracks a day, equal to about 44% of all daily uploads to the platform.
The figure is up sharply from 10,000 daily AI uploads when Deezer launched its detection tool back in January 2025. The jump shows how quickly products such as Suno and Udio have made song creation cheap, fast, and easy to scale.
Despite the volume, Deezer says AI tracks still only account for 1% to 3% of total streams. The music gets few human listeners, but upload pressure is rising. The company says it is also seeing more “fraudulent” submissions.
Its response so far has been practical. Deezer has removed AI-generated songs from recommendation systems, demonetized them, and stopped storing high-resolution versions of those files.
The company also says it’s the only streaming platform currently tagging AI-generated tracks at scale, using that claim to position its moderation tools as a wider industry model.
“AI-generated music is now far from a marginal phenomenon and as daily deliveries keep increasing, we hope the whole music ecosystem will join us in taking action to help safeguard artist’s rights and promote transparency for fans,” CEO Alexis Lanternier said in a blog post.
Deezer has started licensing the detection technology to other companies, turning an internal control system into a commercial product. It says the tool can already identify music created with Suno and Udio, and can be extended to other generators if training data is available.
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The company is also working on detection methods that would not require training datasets, a harder technical step that could widen coverage as new music models appear.
Rivals are taking mixed approaches. Spotify has rolled out policies aimed at curbing AI music. Apple Music is asking artists and labels to disclose AI-made tracks. Qobuz has begun automated labeling, while Bandcamp has banned AI music outright.
For now, Deezer’s numbers suggest the real issue is not listener demand. It’s supply.
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