Can Google and Microsoft defeat Al-Qaeda?

Bits, not bullets, may be the best way to defeat Al-Qaeda and terrorist sympathizers. Both Microsoft and Google are eying the Arab world as the next great Internet marketplace, and that more than the might of the U.S. military may prove to be the greatest weapon in the arsenal to defeat international terrorism.

Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups thrive on ignorance and insularity as a way to recruit new members. In addition, cultures cut off from the modern world are more likely to provide the kind of help and support that terrorist organizations need to survive. Opening up those cultures to the world will cut down on the number of potential recruits, and help change the cultures that support terrorism. It can also help solve intractable economic problems that cause millions of young people to feel as if they have no future in the global marketplace.

So it's heartening to learn that both Google and Microsoft see the Arab world as a great, largely untapped marketplace, and that both companies plan to drastically increase Web and Internet use there. In particular, they are looking to increase the commercial use of the Internet in the Arab world, not just on PCs, but on mobile devices as well.

A Reuters article explains that both companies plan pushes into the Arab world because it has largely been ignored, and has great pent-up demand. It notes:

...while Arab world Internet use since 2000 has grown faster than anywhere else and access costs have shrunk, content still punches below its weight and ad spending remains tiny.

Arabic content is less than 1 percent of world totals though speakers constituting 5 percent of the global population.

The Arabic portal of online encyclopedia Wikipedia carries less words than its Catalan site, Google's regional marketing manager Wael Ghonim said.

"There is a lot of Arabic content but it is not well structured," he said. "We want more structured content. We want more of the professional, niche sites, more businesses."

"One of our biggest missions is to enable Arabic users to find the right tools to enrich Arabic content," Ghonim said. "It would be great to see more e-commerce in the region, more publishers, more news sites. We are committed to help them.

Asked how Google could aid such regional growth, Ghonim said: "We have a very ambitious plan in the next few months, we are working on many initiatives." He did not elaborate.

Microsoft has similar plans. The article quotes Craig Mundie, Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer, as saying:

"Steve Ballmer and I a few years ago talked and believed Arabic would be an increasingly important language. And yet, because of the way the Internet was evolving, it wasn't a language that was getting a lot of use."

Both Microsoft and Google, the article says, have put Arabic in the top ten languages to which they need to pay more attention. The economic reasons for this are clear. The article notes:

Regional spending on online advertising [in the Arabic world] was around $90 million in 2009, up from $66.5 million in 2008 and $38 million in 2007 but still miniscule compared to Britain's $5.3 billion.

Expect much of the new spending and Internet use not to come from PCs, but instead from cell phones and mobile devices. And at first, at least, the use may be more for local and regional content than international content, because most of the new users will not speak the international language of business and the Internet, English.

Egypt has announced a $1 billion plan to upgrade its broadband capacity, the article says, with the goal of increasing Internet penetration in that country from five to 20 percent. That means that the next wave of Internet users in Egypt won't speak English. The article explains:

Such users will likely not foray deeply into the Internet's marketplace initially, but will no longer be hindering from creating part of the fabric of the web by language constraints.

"Think of the guy running a very small one-stop shop in (Nile delta industrial city) Mahalla," Ghonim said. "You should facilitate for him a complete experience in Arabic, from the way he registers his domain to finding a hosting company to communicating to his customers."

That by itself will expand economic opportunities. And over time, users will use the greater Internet as well.

As for the number of users being limited because they can't buy PCs, that may no longer matter, because Microsoft's Mundie notes that cell phones, rather than PCs will be the way many people in the Arab world tap into the Internet:

"The arrival of a very low cost form of computing coupled to the mobile network creates an alternative entry point into the world of computing and internet usage."

Will increased Internet use along solve the problem of terrorism by itself? Certainly not. But change the cultures that spawn terrorism, and you go a long way towards eventually solving the problem.