Google Korea Steadily Expanding
By Kim Tae-gyu
Staff Reporter
Google Korea has recently beaten homegrown rivals Naver and Daum in terms of growth in the portal market.
KoreanClick, the domestic online consultancy, said Friday that the number of monthly visitors to Google's Korean-language site (www.google.co.kr) has grown from 4.3 million in Jan. to 5.5 million in June.
That means its user pool expanded at 4.9 percent every month on average, which is big progress compared to the 1.2 percent of No. 1 player Naver.
``Google still lags far behind Naver or Daum. But it is growing very quickly. Young male Internet users have moved to Google this year,'' said an official at KoreanClick.
As of June, Naver topped the list of monthly visitors with 29.7 million followed by Daum with 28.2 million.
Google, which commands the global search market, debuted its Korean-language search services in 2000 but the firm has suffered setbacks in the saturated domestic market.
However, the search giant gained momentum this year twice by changing its e-mail policy and revising its user interface to cater to local tastes.
The company opened Gmail services in mid-February, which offers an unrivaled 2.8 gigabytes, to the Korean public after three years of invitation-only access.
In May, it introduced a unique user interface, which enables people here to directly access a variety of products through tailored formats.
Included in the products shown at the start-up page are the company's e-mail, toolbar, desktop search and instant chatting services.
``Our effort to win the hearts and minds of Koreans is starting to bear fruit. We will continue to try to enhance Korean users' experience and improve the quality of search,'' Google Korea spokeswoman Lois Kim said.
``One thing I want to make sure is that our top priority is not the traffic itself. Our ultimate goal is to satisfy users. Then traffic will follow,'' she said.