Japan to fight Google search dominance

[bill]

A recent article in The Financial Times:

Japan to fight Google search dominance [ft.com]
The Japanese project is comprised of 10 partnerships, each tasked with a specific next-generation search function. For example, the government has matched NTT Data with Toyota InfoTechnology Center and Toyota Mapmaster to create an interactive, personalised car navigation system. Other partnerships involve NEC, Hitachi and Sony Computer Science Laboratories. The ministry of trade has allocated Y14bn-Y15bn (€89m-€95m) to the project.

Of course this isn't news to faithful participants of WebmasterWorld. We've run threads about this for quite some time now:

Japanese Government Looks To Develop Own Search Engine [webmasterworld.com] - Dec. 19, 2005

new Japanese search engine in the works [webmasterworld.com] - June 16, 2006

It's good to see the mainstream press catching up. ;)
It might help if they didn't always mention Google. Google has never been #1 in the Japanese SE market on its own. They may have been top when they were powering Yahoo Japan's SERPs though.

[jeffposaka]

The local newspaper in Sapporo carried an article about it a few weeks ago. I guess there are two Hokkaido firms involved. I don't know how the Japanese government can keep Sony and NEC and all the other firms working together on it. Seems like a lot of egos at the table.

On September 10, there is a one hour program about Google Japan on TV Tokyo.

[tv-tokyo.co.jp...]

I wonder if Google Japan is on a PR offensive?