Interview with President Google Japan

[takagi]

Norio Murakami, President of Google Japan, gave an interview to JapanToday.

[japantoday.com...]

How is Google doing in Japan?

Well, we've been here since 2001. Currently, 75% of search activities in Japan end up with the Google engine. When we complete a tie-up with the NTT group on Dec 1, maybe it'll be 90%. The majority of searches still go through our partners such as Nifty, Biglobe, Yahoo, Excite, etc.

What about different languages?

If you don't want to separate out languages, you get all pages. The majority of Japanese users look only for Japanese language results.

Where does your revenue come from?

Advertising is linked to a list of search results. We provide the opportunity for advertisers to link to their sites. They now recognize that instead of banner ads, search engine result-linked advertising is much more effective in terms of return of investment because the click ratio is very high. The minimum charge for advertisers is 7 yen per click. We share the revenue with partners.

Advertisers are mainly Japanese companies and some foreign subsidiaries, for example, Amazon.

[bill]

wow...I'm surprised they got that interview. I guess you don't get out much Friday nights takagi ;)

[Chndru]

From the above link

..the company cannot guarantee lifetime employment but we can help them become lifetime employable.

Quote of the day!

[bill]

hah! ;)

I skimmed over that...Japanese corporations have been known to offer lifetime employment...this is a cultural truisim...however, the recent economic climate and the realities of a global economy are slowly eroding that. It's interesting to watch firsthand how these companies deal with this. Some do better than others. Google Japan is a newbie on the block by any standard, but surely they are employing and attracting the upper crust...

[takagi]

>> When we complete a tie-up with the NTT group on Dec 1, maybe it'll be 90%.

Oct. 2--TOKYO--Internet portal operator NTT-X Inc. said Thursday it has agreed to tie up with major U.S. portal site operator Google Inc.

Under the agreement, NTT-X will make use of Google's database to launch a new Internet search service on Dec. 1 to enhance the Japanese language search function of its portal site Goo (http://www.goo.ne.jp/) to make it more competitive with Japan's biggest portal site Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.co.jp/), NTT-X said.

source: Japanese Internet Portal Operator NTT-X Ties Up with Google [hostingtech.com]

see also:
Google Japan Press Release 17 [google.co.jp] (only Japanese)

[bill]

That means Inktomi is out of its biggest partner in the Japanese market, but this may foreshadow the reemergence of Inktomi in Yahoo Japan. I hope that Inktomi does continue to play a role in the Japanese search market because it is one of the few spidering engines remaining. This may be good for goo's relevance, but it relegates them to the status of 'yet another site search powered by Google'. I don't see the incentive for people to use them over anyone else with Google SERPs. At least with the Inktomi SERPS, relevant or not, they were an alternative.

[takagi]

This may be good for goo's relevance, but it relegates them to the status of 'yet another site search powered by Google'. I don't see the incentive for people to use them over anyone else with Google SERPs.

In the press release mentioned in message 5, there was an explanation how Goo would improve the Google's SERPs. One of the points was a kind of 'Did you mean?' help function. They gave the example of searching for "ウィスキィ" (rare/wrong spelling of whiskey in katakana) instead of "ウィスキー". I Just did a test, and searching on Google with the wrong spelling gives 187 results [google.co.jp] (128 results without the '&filter=0' in the URL) without a 'Did you mean?' line. In Goo there were 103 results [search.goo.ne.jp], but also in this case, no 'Did you mean?' link.

However on #11 you could see the press release promising the feature.