Google attacks in Korea

As on of our previous entries suggests, Google is having a hard time to gain market share against the established Korean competition Naver and Daum. In order to increase its presence in the market, Google has announced that it would enlarge its Korean R&D center (ET News, Feb. 28).

Google plans to extensively hire Korean IT specialists in the coming months in order to be able to meet the high demands of the Korean customers in the long run. Google announced that it would modify parts of its service to meet Korean needs and to customize other parts by adding new features.

But how come Google is so interested in the Korean market? Are 48 million potential users enough to justify the effort that Google is putting into the market? I believe that there are at least two other reasons for Google increasing its research efforts in Korea. First, because of their demanding nature, Korean users can serve as a testbed for the global acceptance of new internet services. And, secondly, Korea has an abundant supply of highly skilled IT engineers that have been involved in the development of Web 2.0 applications in technology-savvy Korea.