Today is the last day of 2008, and this is probably my last post for the year 2008. While Google has released its 2008 Year-End Google Zeitgeist for top searches, I noticed that Nigerian top searches for 2008 were not available. This makes me wonder…

1. Could this have been an error of omission by Google?
2. Or does it mean that Nigeria’s search terms were not relevant enough for Google’s Zeitgeist?

My curiosity led me to discover Nigeria’s top searches for 2008 via Google Insights for Search.

From the search, I found that the term ‘nigeria’ was number one on the list of top 10 search terms, followed by ‘1.4 lite’,‘yahoo’, ‘management’ (hmm, management???). That’s strange! Then, the search term ‘google’ was number 5, followed by ‘yahoomail.com’ and ‘yahoomail’.

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I’ve been following the South African blogosphere in recent times and when the SA Blog survey was announced by 24.com in collaboration with Afrigator and Amatomu, I was eager to see how much the SA blogosphere has developed.

From the stats shared my way by Justin Hartman of Afrigator, 88.4% of SA Bloggers earn zero revenue from their blogs, which makes me wonder if Google Adsense is a viable method to earn revenue from blogs.

A look at the figures below will show that the average a South African blogger makes is between R1 and R200 a month. Only 2.9% of the total blogs surveyed earn more than R3000 from their blogs (about $300 USD), which raises several questions as to the essence of the adsense program for African bloggers.

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It is no longer news that Google has been making its footprints across Africa, starting with South Africa and Kenya and now spreading to all sub-Saharan African countries including Nigeria.

Google has since opened offices and hired people in both South Africa and Kenya and has recently announced for Office Lead roles in Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania. This indicates Google’s strong investment interests in Africa, the fastest growing mobile market in the world with mobile penetration ranging from 30% to 100% from country to country (with Nigeria as the largest telecoms market in Africa).

What It Could Mean for The Economy

Google’s presence will have a positive impact on Nigeria’s economy via the introduction of new products, services and innovations for both companies and consumers. These products and services will drive the Nigerian market towards competition and thereby make for price reductions on specific technology-related solutions. Possible products will include Google Enterprise Search, Google Apps Security, Compliance and a variety of free software services.

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In July this year, Google announced an Office Lead role for Nigeria which required that the successful candidate will represent the company in all of their major business development and partnership opportunities and serving as the voice of the Nigerian user at Google.

This position to be located in Lagos, Nigeria was created to pursue technology-driven initiatives in West Africa that will have a meaningful impact on the continent’s development.

Google is dedicated to developing business and partnerships with a range of organizations as well as driving the localization of Google’s products to local markets. Presently, these positions are located in the countries of Rwanda, Senegal, Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda and Tanzania.

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Google (I call them the Big G) has been one of the leading lions of the Internet jungle always looking out for preys to capture. Could you believe that Google bought 19 start-ups in 2007?

Google’s most recent start-up acquisitions were Begun (online advertising) from Russia for $140 million; Omnisio (Online video) from the US for $15 million; and TNC, a weblog software from South Korea for an undisclosed amount. Google’s largest acquisition as of March 2008 is the purchase of DoubleClick, an online advertising company, for US$3.1 billion.

Most Internet startups and their founders always dream of a multimillion-dollar buyout or the lucrative initial public offers. While it may seem impossible, we’d all love to think that Internet giants such as Google, Yahoo! or Microsoft would soon be acquiring web startups out of Africa. The search company has footprints in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Finland, Germany, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, South Korea and of course the United States.

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