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The story
Early days
Maktoob was founded in 1999 by Samih Toukan and Hussam Khoury, offering a webmail service featuring Arabic language support—a unique feature at the time when other free email services lacked such capability. They facilitated users without Arabic keyboards or browsers supporting Arabic script to send and receive emails.
Abraaj Capital acquisition
In June 2005, the UAE-based private equity house Abraaj Capital purchased 40% of the company shares in a $5 million deal.
In April 2006, Maktoob acquired 80% of the popular Arab sports website Sport4ever.com.
In December 2007, Abraaj sold its share to Tiger Global Management.
Yahoo! acquisition
In 2009, Maktoob was sold to Yahoo! for $164 million. In January 2011, email users were migrated from the @maktoob.com domain to the @yahoo.com domain.
In October 2014, Yahoo! announced its intention to let go half of its staff in Dubai, some immediately, others three months later. Then it announced in December 2015 the closure of its office in Dubai, its last office in the MENA region. The move was an attempt to "streamline" Yahoo's international operations.
From Wikipedia’s article on Maktoob, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4