Google One-Ups Yahoo In Japan
Duncan Riley
20 comments »
Google is set to sign a deal with Japan’s biggest mobile phone operator NTT DoCoMo that will see Google become the default search provider to 48 million NTTDoCoMo customers. The deal will also see NTT DoCoMo switching to Google Apps for the provision of email to it customers.
Japan is one of the few markets globally in which Yahoo is ahead of Google in search, holding 65.9% of the market in April to Google’s 27.8%. The overall gap amongst all Yahoo and Google properties however isn’t quite as wide, with Yahoo properties totaling 41 million unique visitors in August (comScore) to Google’s 31 million.
The deal will be a much needed boost for Google in a search market that it has failed to lead, unlike nearly every other country on the planet.
According to Reuters, the alliance may eventually lead to the development of new functions and handsets.
That souns amzaing now is gogole going to sell mobile phones ?
The day will come where I eat Google Flakes for breakfast, drive my GCar to my job (at Google of course) followed by a Gwitch and G20 for lunch. They are quickly becoming another GE or even Microsoft, which pretty much have their hand through various VCs in just about every aspect of our lives.
Jon
“Yahoo! Japan” is largely owned by Softbank (now a competitior of DoCoMo).
Sounds amazing!
http://www.spymac.com/details/?2321924
This is a classic example of a leader or 1st mover completely resting on its laurels and dropping the ball. Yahoo is also the preferred auction site in Japan!
I would suggest Google execs not to put too much money on it. NTT Docomo deals have failed miserably in the past including AT&T Wireless, AOL, Adobe, Microsoft, Napster, Symbian, Palm…you name it.
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Google will have to change it’s lean clean search page and add a ton of crap around it since Japanese seem to really like all that noise. Have you seen Japanese websites? They’re the anti-google.
to linuxamp: i sort of agree, east asian people seems more used to multi-task
#5, read #3.
There are 3 carriers in Japan. DoCoMo, AU, and Softbank.
DoCoMo has 50%+ marketshare, AU already is in bed with google (http://www.kddi.com/english/corporate/news_release/2007/0730/index.html), and Softbank owns Yahoo.
Google try to catching Yahoo in Japan now!
hmm sounds good..Yahoo! Japan…
Interesting… However, Korea is still another market where Google have not managed to grow big. Here, Naver and other sites are providing the same or better services (available in Korean only mostly unfortunatly). So Google is not everything and especially not in the leading Asian countries.
I think it is a good website.
http://www.nttdocomo.us
Having worked on one of the above-mentioned failed partnerships with DoCoMo, I would recommend that everyone not get too excited about this announcement until they see how it’s implemented. DoCoMo is a monster in Japan and are used to getting their way (much as Google is elsewhere.) If DoCoMo did this as a jab to SoftBank (which I imagine they did), they’re not going to implement it the way Google wants.
If this partnership is still alive in 18 months, I’ll be surprised.
I totally agree with JohnS… I don’t see it as a big deal. Yahoo is the default mail/search app on Softbank phones, and Softbank (which of course owns a large chunk of Yahoo Japan and I think around 10% of Yahoo stock in general) has made a big splash in the past couple years after floundering around as Vodafone Japan, so likely they’re just trying to fire some shots over Softbank Mobile’s bow…
You really should be saying “Yahoo Japan” instead of Yahoo because the 2 are almost completely separate companies. The only tie between the 2 is that Yahoo Inc owns 33% of the shares of Yahoo Japan.
Google will have to improve it’s search functionality. When it comes to searches in the Japanese language, Yahoo is superior. Besides, Googoos usually comes up with a Yahoo page anyway, on those rare instances when it doesn’t point to a Chinese website. I’m increasingly dissatisfied w/ Goog, not because of their metastatic omnipresence, but because of their decreasing quality. Used to be Google would come up with all the sites that were relevant. Now, it’s all the sites Google thought police deem to be relevant. As far as the clutter goes, like all things technology, Japan’s networks are superior to the US’s, so it doesn’t hamper downloading like it does here. What I hate about Yahoo’s clutter is not that it’s inelegant and ugly, but that it’s impractical and takes a long time to download even on a high-speed network. On dial-up? Forget it!
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