Google has launched a new Arabic transliteration service aiming to compete with the well-established made-in-lebanon Yamli. It has become a subject of controversy when some Arab bloggers noticed that Google was placing ads for its new service on the result page of the keyword "Yamli". Anyhow, Google has now removed those ads.

For the moment, I prefer Yamli's service as I find it more accurate and a tad more responsive. But I'm sure that by the time the big G releases the tool from its Labs to it's never-ending stage of Beta the tool will provide a more usable service.

Anyway, I think we're the winners here, as both companies will strive to provide better services to the the end-user.

Let the competition begin :)

Link: http://www.google.com/transliterate/arabic
Imitators.
Why do they have to do what already exist... Google are starting to act like Microsoft.
Imitators.
Why do they have to do what already exist...
Competition drives innovation.
they could have just bought them like they usually do :P
Good point, bass ne7na be lebnen ma men7ebb l rachweh :P
I am starting not to like Google
when they play with the small companies and start-ups, they don't really get a chance.

but so far, i would still use yamli
any ideas how the yamli hits are going ?
don't talk like that about my best friend!!!!!!

i would also keep using yamli, specially that it's lebanese... (yeah, i'm racist :P). but the thing is that we can't really blame google, it's web apps, it's their field, it's normal that they will fight to get it. and as samer said, competition is good. you can't blame them for that. or should we support closed source and copyrighting everything and whenever someone creates something, banning everybody else to do the same? this is the actual annoying behavior of microsoft and apple, closed sources, copyrights, patents, ... what google does is very different. they kind of have a monopole and lots of money to spend and abuse it, but their behavior is VERY different than microsoft's and apple's.