new Japanese search engine in the works

30 organizations to jointly develop new advanced Internet search engine

[bill]

Some how I think we've heard of this project before, but I can't find the links now. There's an article in the Mainichi Daily News that mentions this "new advanced Internet search engine [mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp]" that several Japanese companies, schools, and organizations are going to be working on.

Currently, three major U.S. Internet companies, Yahoo, Google and Microsoft, dominate the search engine market and have kept their search engine technology a secret. Many people in Japan fear that the domination of the three firms will prevent Japanese companies from entering the market.

Back in the internet bubble period there were quite a few Japanese search engines. Most of them were using borrowed technology though. The few homegrown alternatives really weren't all that impressive and unfortunately none of them are left. The big foreign search engines cleaned up in the Japanese market because they were simply better.

Although I think it's a good thing to have another big Japanese SE I think they're coming to the game a bit late with this effort. One of the reason's that Google hasn't been able to overtake Yahoo in Japan is that people are set in their ways. It's going to be quite a task to get people to use this new engine.

[zCat]

I've got a suggestion for the new SE's name: butaniku-no-taru.jp ;-).

Though I get the impression it's more of a search engine technology platform which is being developed, rather than a direct rival to Yahoo and Google.

Isn't goo ( [search.goo.ne.jp...] ) a homegrown SE?

[bill]

Isn't goo ( [search.goo.ne.jp...] ) a homegrown SE?

Not technology wise. They were an Inktomi shop for years. Back in the good old days that was the way to get your sites into the backdoor of Ink. Submit to goo and you were in the spider queue.

[zCat]

But aren't goo using their own spider technology now (ichiro and co.)? I get a few hits from there for certain search terms on several of my sites, and the SERPs seem different to any others I know.

[zCat]

Slightly OT from the original post, but this looks interesting:
[suggest.search.goo.ne.jp...]

Search query input support aided by ATOK.

[bill]

But aren't goo using their own spider technology now (ichiro and co.)?

You may be right about the spider. I remember back when they announced the NTT Labs project several years ago. I really don't know if that entire project was borrowing any existing technology. I got the impression that they were building off the Slurp spider.