Korea's Naver is now the world's 5th search service provider, behind Google, Yahoo, Baidu, and Microsoft.
According to comScore's qSearch 2.0 service, more than 37 billion searches worldwide went through Google in August. That's about 60 percent of all searches, higher than Google's 50 percent in the United States.Fittingly, NHN's stock price is soaring (NHN is the company behind Naver - NHN's other important business is Hangame, the gaming portal).Yahoo Inc. was second worldwide with 8.5 billion, followed by Baidu at 3.3 billion, Microsoft Corp. at 2.2 billion and NHN at 2 billion.
NHN stock price over the last year
Meanwhile, according to Korea's eDaily, Naver denies the widespread rumor that the company runs a team in China to "manufacture" search data and hand-pick quality search results. Yeah, right.
But whether Naver has used human labor or not, I believe its position as the world's fifth search service provider is a remarkable feat to achieve. As a startup person, I just hope that the 800-lb gorilla doesn't trounce all startups in Korea and stifle startup innovations. Companies like Nokia have shown that a company can both foster startups and be successful.
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