The company's Middle East representative: We're closer than ever to a Hebrew portal.
"Globes" has learned that the Yahoo! portal is likely to launch a Hebrew site in September.
Yahoo! has had representative offices in Israel for the past two years, but to date, it has focused on activity in the local market, mainly selling advertising space on Yahoo! sites. Similar to its major competitors America Online (AOL) and Microsoft's portal network MSN, Yahoo!'s strategy is to set up a worldwide network of portals. At the same time, to date, the Israeli Internet market was not regarded as sufficiently attractive from Yahoo!'s viewpoint.
"We already said in the past that we're willing to set up a Hebrew portal," company Middle East representative Tamir Eshel said, while refusing to announce the date of the expected launching. "Yahoo! is involved in various parts of the world, and you could say that in Israel we're now closer than ever to setting up a Hebrew portal."
Eshel also refused to comment on future content partnerships with Israeli content entities, noting only that the Yahoo! site in Israel will be built under a similar formula to other Yahoo! sites around the world.
Published by Israel's Business Arena on 11 July, 2000