March 19, 2003

Popular online search engine site Google is forging an alliance with Daum Communications, the nation’s biggest online portal as part of its move to challenge the domestic online search engine market where domestic companies, such as NHN and Empas, dominate.

Daum plans to launch an upgraded search engine, which offers better search services this month to local Internet users. ``To improve Daum's online search engine, we selected Google as our partner,’’ said Lee Soo-hyung, chief of the company’s online search engine division.

``Through integration of the world's best search engine with Daum's rich Internet contents, we are able to offer the best search service,’’ he said. Omid Kordestani, Google's senior vice president of worldwide sales and field operations, said Daum subscribers would benefit from its fast and comprehensive search results.

``With this partnership, we will be able to increase Google's exposure in Korea, one of the most important internet markets in Asia,’’ Omid Kordestani said. Google has introduced a new program that allows Web sites to be displayed more prominently by paying more money _ an advertising-driven system derided by critics as an invitation to deceptive business practices.

The system lets Web sites raise their bids to increase their chances for higher placement on the section of Google's site that's devoted to sponsored links. Currently, Google offers a Korean-language online search engine service, but it is an experimental service remotely run by the company’s U.S. headquarters.

Daum boasts of 34 million registered subscribers with two million online communities. Daum users view an average of 400 million pages a day. For the third quarter of 2002, Daum passed a break-even point and posted record earnings in the fourth quarter on the back of growing sales in online retailing.

In 2002, online shopping transactions topped six trillion won, up more than 80 percent from 2001 on growing Internet purchases of home appliances, computers, cosmetics and clothes, according to the Ministry of Information and Communication. Daum’s operating profit reached 6.9 billion won for the fourth quarter of 2002 on sales worth 77.1 billion won.

Article by Kim Deok-hyun
Source: The Korea Times

        

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