Google To Invest Millions in Palestine

As someone with family in Israel and strong views on the ME conflict, I think this is great news. Anything which supports/encourages the Palestinians making their own lives better and producing stuff which doesn't explode is a good thing for everyone in the region. This sort of thing is how a viable Palestinian state is going to come about, if ever.

Inflammatory title. The story is about investments in Gaza and the West Bank. 'Palestine' is not a country, it's a name for an entire region, including Israel and parts of Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. The author probably meant 'Palestinian National Authority'.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine</a><p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_National_Authority" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_National_Authority</a>

Is Google in the practice of making these kinds of investments in very early stage tech sectors? What is in this for them?

It will be <i>exceedingly</i> interesting to watch the progress/outcome of this investment (<i>if</i> Google chooses to share honestly, something that's clearly optional). The best indication of the actual ROI of this investment will be whether further investments are forthcoming (although Google could pour a few tens of millions USD down a hole and not notice). Anyone know if Google has invested comparable amounts in Lebanon, Syria or Libya?

From the story it seems they are investing €2 million. It doesn't seem like a lot but hopefully it will be just the start

I wonder, why are they doing this? I mean, the reason tech companies go to Israel is because there's an enormous concentration of talent there. Why would they go to Palestine? I don't think there's any talent there. Is this a humanitarian thing?<p>I'd be happy to hear first-hand experiences from people who worked with Palestinian developers or with software produced by Palestinian developers.