Recently in Search Category

The FT has a good overview of some markets where Google is not leading search including China, Korea, Japan, Russia, Czech Rep. In addition to these, you can add Taiwan too. If there are other markets where Google isn't leading, please leave a comment.

Yandex, which handles 46 per cent of search queries in Russia, has been preparing since the spring for a listing on the US stock market. Seznam, which controls 63 per cent of Czech searches, has been the subject of a number of buy-out approaches, according to two internet industry insiders.

Along with just three others, these represent the only local companies that have prevented the global search business from turning into "Planet Google."

Baidu in China and Naver in South Korea each handle about 60 per cent of internet searches in their respective countries, while Yahoo Japan claims slightly more than half of its local search market.

Google still struggling to conquer outposts

Google minus Google.

So simple, but well done. I think I will make this my home page for a bit.

I have a long screed in me about the power of inertia in Japan (well inertia is powerful everywhere I suppose) and how the status quo doesn't seem to change in various parts of Japan that I seem to stare at, be it politics, or the advertising industry, etc. Of course there are exceptions to the rule, like Nintendo coming back from the brink as evidenced in this cute video graphic from Kotaku.

Ken Auletta reports in The New Yorker on Google's increasing lobbying operations in Washington DC: The Search Party. The last quote by Eric Schmidt was fascinating.

“When you have a technology that is as engrossing as the Internet, you’re going to have winners and losers. I’m not trying to sound arrogant. I’m trying to sound rational about it. The Internet allows people to consume media in a different way.” He believes that because Google is “run by three computer scientists we’re going to make all the mistakes computer scientists running a company would make. But one of the mistakes we’re not going to make is the mistake that non-scientists make. We’re going to make mistakes based on facts and data and analysis.” He paused. Then he said, “What kills a company is not competition but arrogance. We control our fate.”

Comments on my blog are still broken.

Cambria Kyuden (with hosts author Ryu Murakami and model Eiko Koike), the Monday night interview TV show on TV Tokyo (10 PM JST) is hosting Norio Murakami of Google Japan on September 10th. See also Japan Today for additional background on Murakami. Two famous Murakamis on the same show?

Fukumimi writes about the recent Google Japan open house.

Even more disappointing than the fluffy presentations were the questions from the floor. The first guy up introduced himself as a marcom guy from MSFT who, in what I though was a fairly aggressive/pointed manner for a guest, asked something along the lines of “what do you (GOOG) think is the best marcom strategy?”. Which was answered (or not) with some typical fluff response which was equally unnoteworthy. And it pretty much went downhill from there. I think the questions asked showed GOOG that the people asking the questions were not GOOG material, so I guess the event served some purpose (maybe not for marcom, but rather for HR…). It also felt like some of the Googlers were getting a little bit defensive at some of the questions. Maybe they expected a load of fanboys who would gush praise and give them an ego boost. What they actually got were people who were either agnostic or even antagonistic. I guess the silent majority may have been fanboys, difficult to tell. There was a pretty edgy vibe in the room, I thought.

It was almost as if the Googlers couldn’t understand why the audience weren’t lapping up the kool-aid.

If they are as good at “innovating” and “learning from mistakes” as they claim to be, their humility should allow them to acknowledge that they have a huge amount of work to do in the marcom area in Japan, and they’ll learn from last night. Just plying guests with free food and booze does not guarantee a friendly audience.

Sounds like it didn't go quite as planned....

UPDATE: Scott of TechJapan.com corrects me that these are not Flash.

Changwon Kim of Web 2.0 Asia points us to the fact that Google Korea's homepage now has 7 Flash-driven CSS image rollover "buttons" linking to popular Google services. I can see this being popular in Japan as well.

I don't like the fact that they are Flash animated, but it is interesting to see Google change their UI in Korea, where they are trailing Naver.

VentureBeat on Baidu's clickfraud.

The study, conducted by Peter Lu, of the China IntelliConsulting Corp (copy of pdf here), found that advertisers believe 34 percent of all clicks on Baidu ads are fraudulent, compared to 24 percent on Google. The report has other warning signs for Baidu, including suggestions that more advertisers plan to cancel campaigns with Baidu, compared with Google, and that more advertisers plan to begin campaigns with Google.

VentureBeat - Baidu’s click-fraud problem, and more on Fraudwall

Looks like male Korean users, aged 25-29 have moved over from Naver to Google. Also Google's recent opening of Gmail to all users in Korea has also helped them.

KoreanClick, the domestic online consultancy, Thursday said the number of unique visitors to Google's Korean-language search site (www.google.co.kr) was 3.8 million in January, up 14.9 percent from a year before.
...
Around 26.6 million people used Naver's search engine in January while Daum drew a total of 21.2 million clients to its flagship e-mail offerings in the cited period.

However, Naver's year-on-year growth rate was just 3 percent and Daum even saw the number of visitors shrink 5.8 percent from 22.5 million in January 2006.

"We learned male Internet users aged between 25 and 29 moved from Naver to Google last year for some reason," a KoreanClick researcher said.
...
"Although Google has struggled to make its presence felt in the local market, we have always kept a tab on the firm because it has a financial and technical edge," Mirae Asset analyst Kim Kyung-mo said.

Google has "a financial and technical edge"? Those asset analysts, so insightful!

AsiaMedia :: KOREA: Google secretly strikes back in Korea

Fascinating look at the CEO of Yahoo! Korea who's stepping down after 2 plus years.

A chemical engineering major in Yonsei University, Sung worked for three years at the trading department of Samsung Corp. and earned an MBA degree from the University of California, Berkeley. After returning to Korea in 1996, he was a consultant at McKinsey & Company and Accenture, and was hired by Yahoo Korea in December 2004. He served as chief operation officer for the company before getting promoted to CEO in October 2005.

Sung has allegedly had views that conflicted with Yahoo headquarters, as he wanted to acquire several tech firms in South Korea while the U.S. headquarters stuck to a tight budget.

What is more interesting is to consider who Yahoo! Inc. will hire to take that role. It's got to be a really tough role- trying to get out from underneath Naver, Daum and Nate.

The Korea Times : Yahoo Korea CEO to Resign