Web 2.0 Asia

Silicon Alley Insider reports that Kai-Fu Lee, Google China's president, said Google aspires to become China's search market leader within five years. Lee's comments back up Eric Schmidt's audacious statement.

"Certainly, we would like to aspire to be a market leader in five years," Mr. Lee said Monday on the sidelines of the Boao Forum for Asia.

Google accounted for 26% of China's Internet-search revenue in the fourth quarter, up from 17% a year earlier, according to Beijing research firm Analysys International. Market leader Baidu.com's share of the market rose to 60% from 58%.

Many Internet users in China are more familiar with Baidu, which started earlier in the country and which attracts users in significant part by facilitating easy access to free music.

If Google China does succeed in becoming the top dog in China, it will certainly be a sweet revenge against Baidu, which practically mocked Google with its infamous "I know you don't know" commercial (ironical this is hosted on Google's own Youtube):



Going back to the quote again, Google China's market share jumped from 17% to 26% in over a year. That's pretty remarkable growth, isn't it? Especially so, contrasting those figures against Google Korea's current market share, which is 2.16% as of March 2008 (according to Korean Click, a Korean web analytics company.)

Why is Google struggling to break into the Korean market? It might be because Korea is a unique market where "monoculture" dominates, or it might be because Korean local incumbents, most notably Naver, are so good. Or it might be the combination of both.

Wizard, a Korean widget and startpage company (Korea's Netvibes?), posted April Fool's joke on its company blog. The company made a (fake) announcement that they've been acquired by Google, and that their product is being integrated with iGoogle.

The funny part is, they also put up what they claimed was "a copy of M&A contract with Google", which is titled as "Slavery Contract".

(Via Hatena) Nielsen/NetRatings Japan announced Google is now #2 in Japanese market, surpassing Rakuten, in terms of number of users. These are cross-property figures, meaning the # of Google users include Youtube users as well.

When I was in Japan, I saw quite a few Japanese people using Google search. (Google search market share in Japan is estimated around 35%). And also Youtube is very strong in Japan, partly thanks to the service's foreign basis which helps Japanese users go around the tricky Japanese IP/legal issues. Google seem to be doing fairly well in Japan, as IBM and Apple does.

In contrast, Google is not gaining much turf in the neighboring Korean market - although Korea is the world's 6th largest web market, Google has only around 1.5% market share versus local Naver's 70+%.

I agree with the recent article "Google fails to make inroads in South Korea" (via Bubblegeneration): Google Korea may not exactly be a flop, but Google is not gaining ground and thereby living up to its global brand here in Korea. It's an open secret.

As the article suggests, Naver Knowledge iN (as well as other Naver Search components) rocks. I use it all the time, including last night when I was trying to figure out the part of the movie "M:I 3" that was unclear to me.

The movie premiered only last night, yet all the answers to any possible unclear plots of the movie were already there at Knowledge iN. You get the picture, right?

I think the success of Naver search has been largely helped by the fact that Korea is a very homogeneous society where people often have very common and shared interests. I mean, every society has its memes and zeitgeist, but I think Korea is a little more special. 48+ million people packed in a small country that's equipped with dead efficient broadband and mobile networks. That's an interesting (and even a bit dangerous) combination.

This means, chances are Naver knows what you want to ask it about. For instance, if Park Ji-Sung (the footballer of Mancester United) scored a goal, then when you type "P" in Naver search, Park Ji-Sung's name comes to the top of automatically suggested keywords list.

People criticize Naver doesn't depend on superb technology as much as it does on human intervention and therefore the service is not highly scalable and can only be thriving in some small, homogenous societies like Korea.

But anyway, when it comes to the Korean market, Naver is here to stay and rule. This leads to an interesting question: Google Korea's next move. Back off? or Buy Naver?