"Korea has not yet begun to develop its mobile technology."
Google Korea is stepping up its game by tailoring its services to attract a larger share of the Korean market. The company is also hoping to extend its mobile services in anticipation of growth in the smartphone market in Korea.
“This year we will introduce a new main page to match the preferences of Korean users,” Cho Won-gyu, Google Korea’s head of research and development, said late on Wednesday.
Although the new main page has not yet been revealed, he said the new design will display popular topics, issue makers of the week, entertainment and popular blogs to mimic the look of Korean portals such as Naver and Daum. The company has already made some changes to its opening page by adding news, image slides and hot topics.
This is a huge step for the company considering that this is one of the few times it is altering its universal format, which displays a single search box under the Google logo.
Although Google dominates the world’s search engine market with a 70 percent share, it has been struggling in Korea against portal companies such as Naver and Daum that dominate the local market.
Cho said the U.S. company is positive about the changes its Korean affiliate will be making. However, he emphasized that Google’s new main page will not be exactly the same as that of other Korean portals.
“Our new main page will still feel like Google,” Cho said. “The difference between Google and Korean portals is that the Korean portals confine users to the content accessible by the portal, whereas Google’s goal is to send users to as much original content as possible as fast as possible,” Cho added.
He added that Google Korea is expecting to play a larger role in the mobile market next year, especially since mobile services such as Google Maps are already accessible on smartphones around the world.
“The increase in the number of smartphone users here will also increase the presence of the company in the Korean market,” he said.
“Many people think of Korea as a developed country in terms of mobile technology but personally I think Korea is a country that has not yet begun to develop its mobile technology,” Cho said. “Korean consumers think of video communication via mobile phone as mobile technology, but it is more about high-speed Internet access.”
Cho said the “mobile Internet era” will really start to heat up next year as smartphones take hold, and especially with the recent launch of the iPhone.
By Lee Ho-jeong [ojlee82@joongang.co.kr]
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