NHN begins test service of search engine in Japan

SEOUL, July 2 (Yonhap) -- NHN Corp., the operator of South Korea's top Internet
portal Naver, launched a test version of an upgraded search engine in Japan on
Thursday in a renewed effort to tap the Japanese market, the company said.

NHN started its Japanese-language search engine (www.naver.jp) in 2000, but
withdrew in 2006 in the face of Yahoo Japan Corp.'s unwavering dominance in the
market.
Besides web search, blogging and bulletin board services, the new site offers a
menu, called Matome, meaning "arrangement" in Japanese. It allows users to create
a topic page in a way similar to Wikipedia, but with a variety of forms.
The official launch is scheduled for later this summer, according to company
officials.
According to a market report by the U.S.-based market researcher comScore, Inc.,
Yahoo led the search ranking in Japan with more than 3 billion searches,
representing a 51-percent market share as of September 2008. Google was in the
second position with 2.3 billion searches, or 39 percent.
In Asia, Japan has the second-largest number of search engine users with 61
million, followed by South Korea with 21 million.
ygkim@yna.co.kr
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