By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter

NHN, the operator of Naver (www.naver.gogole com), the country's most popular Web site, takes pride in being one of the planet's few Internet companies that can claim itself as a Google-beater.

And the company has no intention of letting the U.S. search giant appear larger in the rear-view mirror, and doesn't want to hear talk about an open Web environment.

In a recent meeting with news reporters, NHN Chief Operating Officer (COO) Lee Joon-ho revealed Naver's improved search services, which he said are designed to recognize the search habits of individuals.

So far, Naver has been arranging the search results based on the number of hits. Since earlier this month, however, the company has been testing a new technology that supposedly measures ``satisfaction,'' analyzing the type of content a user tends to prefer and reflect the information in search results.

The technology was incorporated into Naver's search services starting Sunday, Lee said.

``The number of clicks is not always consistent with the level of satisfaction the user gets from each search result,'' Lee said.

``We also tried to find a solution to the problem that the search result shown on the top will continue to get the most hits just because it is there.''

Lee mentioned Google frequently during his conversations, claiming that NHN's level of search technology ``doesn't trail'' that of the U.S. giant.

He also denounced Google for what he claimed as an attempt to ``free ride'' Naver's massive pool of user content to improve its miniscule position in the Korean search market.

``Google is a company that collects information from Web sites created by other companies and provides them as search results,'' Lee said.

``There is no reason for Naver to offer its collected content to Google for nothing in exchange.''

Naver controls more than 70 percent of local search traffic, and has been successfully leveraging this dominance to blogs and member-only Web communities to secure a massive database of user-generated content.

Determined to lock-in its search traffic, Naver has been reluctant to allow content generated by its subscribers to be used by other search engines.

This has Google and other Korean Internet companies Daum (www.daum.net) and Nate (www.nate.com) calling for NHN to open Naver's walled network, in what industry watchers dubbed as an ``anti-Naver front.''

Google's advantage for accessing English-language content is not appearing to be a distinctive strength here, and the company's lack of user-generated content is a problem in a country where users have grown accustomed to question-and-answer type search services.

Google has been attempting to acquire its own database of user-generated network, buying Tatter and Company (TNC), a Korean blogging platform service company, last year to launch its own blogging services. However, the efforts have yet to yield any meaningful improvement in market share.

It would help if Google could include more Naver content on its search results, but Lee said Naver is intent on going its own way.

``The content from our `caf?' Web communities and blogs is critical for us in developing Web services that are more attentive to user needs. It is also a big reason why our search results provide more sophisticated information than those of Google,'' Lee said.

thkim@koreatimes.co.kr