Maktoob

Maktoob Inc. (Arabic: مكتوب‎) is an Arab Internet services company, founded in Amman, Jordan known for being the first Arabic/English email service provider. "Maktoob" in Arabic means "letter", "written", or "destiny".. On 25 August 2009, Yahoo! Inc. announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Maktoob.com, thus turning Maktoob into Yahoo!'s official arm in the MENA region. Eventually Maktoob was sold to Yahoo!.

History

Maktoob was founded in 1998 by Samih Toukan and Hussam Khoury who were able to introduce a webmail service with Arabic support for emails when no other free email service had such support. They also helped users who did not have Arabic keyboard or browsers that support Arabic to send and receive emails by using a virtual keyboard which was done in Java, and using Java applets that had better Arabic support.

The initial flourish of Maktoob and its large user base led the company to create several services and content channels for Arab users, many of which were not found previously in Arabic format. Chatting, Greeting Cards, and simple content channels were upon the first to be developed internally. Since then, Maktoob diversified its services through both acquisitions and internal development to have close to 40 different channels and services.