To celebrate the birthday of world-acclaimed Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz, the famous search engine Google inserted a picture of the novelist in its logo, replacing the two ‘O’s in the world ‘Google’.
It is the first time that Google has commemorated a prominent Arab figure. On its page, "Google Answers", Google opened the floor for debate on the Nobel Prize Laureate.
Google’s action was well-received by youth in Egypt, who shared the logo over the internet and considered it a worthy gesture.
Meanwhile, Mohamed Salmawy, president of the Arab Writers’ Union, said the union would celebrate Mahfouz’s anniversary this month by holding a conference called "Naguib Mahfouz and his Plays", in order to bring attention to the plays Mahfouz wrote, which did not receive as much attention as his novels.
Born on 11 September, 1911, Naguib Mahfouz won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1988. Google, the company which honored Mahfouz, was founded by Larry Badge and Sergey Sergey Brin while they were students at Stanford University. Google went public in August 2004, and raised US$1.67 billion, bringing the total value of the company to over US$23 billion.
Translated from the Arabic Edition.
