Naver Beats Google and Yahoo in South Korea
July 6th, 2007, 1 Comment »
The other day I encountered this unlikely success story from South Korea:
Tapping a South Korean inclination to help one another on the Web has made Naver.com the undisputed leader of Internet search in the country. It handles more than 77 percent of all Web searches originating in South Korea, thanks largely to content generated, free of charge, by people like Park and Cho.
Daum.net, another South Korean search portal, comes in second with a 10.8 percent share, followed by Yahoo’s Korean-language service with 4.4 percent.
77%–those are Google-sized numbers. South Korea seems to be on the bleeding edge of a number of technology trends, thanks to ubiquitious, awesome broadband and, I gather, certain cultural inclinations. They are, I believe, the nation that plays the most hours of online games per capita in the world.