Is it easy for a new SE to come into Japan?

[azimao529]

Yahoo and Google dominate the Japanese SE makt, are there any opportunities for another foreign SE to come here?

[bill]

The rise of Google Japan was not enough to squeeze Yahoo! Japan out of the top slot in Japanese search, but it was enough to push a lot of the smaller players out of the market entirely. Like Naver Japan [webmasterworld.com] many search engines in Japan either closed their doors or jumped on the Google or Yahoo bandwagon. The search landscape in Japan is quite different than it was 4-5 years earlier when there were a lot of domestic crawlers/robots out there scanning all the Japanese content on the web.

Could another SE enter the Japanese market? Sure. Would it be successful? That would depend on the engine and the investment they wanted to put into it. I think it would take a lot more money nowadays to get a new engine off the ground than it did only a few years ago. Even MSN Japan and Ask Japan are struggling here. It would be challenging for any newcomer in Japan, that's for sure. And money alone certainly wouldn't be enough. The SE would have to be quite compelling to get people to switch in any number.