[abdias]

Well, one reason could be that Saudi-Arabia is planning so-called "smart" cities and Google wants to be in the center of it all (a UN driven program - IMO a potential tyranny sprayed in rose perfume).

https://www.saudismartcities.net/

https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en_us/about/ac79/docs/success/Sa...

https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingo...