News

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.

Published

4 years ago

May 27, 2022

google contributed billions of dollars to the middle east economy in 2021

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.

Also Read: How To Find Remote-Only Tech Jobs In 2023

“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.

News

Noon And Yango Switch On Robot Deliveries In Dubai

The rollout folds autonomous couriers into noon’s rapid-delivery network as the UAE tests everyday autonomy.

Published

3 days ago

December 10, 2025

Nour Nasir

noon and yango switch on robot deliveries in dubai

Noon and Yango Group have signed an agreement to put autonomous robot deliveries into commercial use in Dubai, turning Yango’s earlier pilots into a daily service for noon Minutes orders. The launch in Sobha Hartland is the first full integration of Yango Autonomy’s electric robots with a major e-commerce network in the region, with wider deployment planned across Dubai and, later, other GCC markets.

Residents can choose a robot at checkout, track it in the app and unlock its compartment once it arrives. The hardware runs on Yango’s AI navigation and routing stack, which plans paths, avoids obstacles and yields to pedestrians. The units had already covered more than 1,500 kilometers during previous Dubai pilots, a test bed that demonstrated their ability to operate in mixed pedestrian environments and dense residential streets.

The rollout adds a contactless option to noon’s last-mile network and is positioned as extra capacity during peak periods. “Partnering with Yango Group lets us bring a future-ready delivery option straight to our customers,” said Ali Kafil-Hussain, noon’s Chief Business Officer. Noon has used Minutes to set rapid-delivery expectations in UAE cities; autonomous units now slot into that same high-frequency model.

Regulatory clearance from Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority underpins the move. The RTA authorized Yango’s robots to operate on public walkways and in neighborhoods, smoothing the shift from controlled trials to commercial work. Dubai has framed autonomous mobility as part of its smart-city buildout, and the partners lean on that agenda to accelerate integration.

Also Read: Uber And WeRide Roll Out Driverless Robotaxis In Abu Dhabi

For Yango, the partnership is an anchor for its autonomy platform in the Gulf. Islam Abdul Karim, Yango’s Middle East regional head, said the aim is to make autonomous delivery an “everyday, reliable service” for UAE communities. The company views operational data from early districts as the basis for scaling into more communities and, eventually, cross-border rollouts.

The move lands as Gulf retailers search for faster fulfilment and lower-emission logistics. Autonomous couriers remain a small share of last-mile delivery, but Dubai’s approvals and early usage data give the partners a clearer path to turn pilots into durable infrastructure.