South Koreans Connect Through Search Engine

From New York Times -

SEOUL, South Korea July 4, 2007 — Park Hye Ran, a 15-year-old high school student, wanted to know the shortest route from a bus terminal in the southern port city of Busan to a fish market to the east.

That is precisely the kind of question that Cho In Joon, 50, a seller of lottery tickets in Busan, loves to answer.

Sitting at a computer installed at his street kiosk, Mr. Cho posted a reply for Ms. Park — and for other Naver.com users who might one day ask the same question — with instructions on where she should switch trains, which station exit she should take and how long it would take to walk from there to the market. He even attached a map of the market area.

Thanks to tens of thousands of other volunteer respondents, Web users in Korea seldom Google anything. They “Naver” it.

Tapping a South Korean inclination to help one another on the Web has made Naver.com the undisputed leader of Internet search in the country. It handles more than 77% of all Web searches originating in South Korea, thanks largely to content generated by users, free of charge.

Daum.net, another South Korean search portal, comes in second with a 10.8% share, followed by Yahoo's Korean-language service with 4.4%.

Google, the top search engine in the world, barely registers in the country’s online consciousness, handling just 1.7% of South Korean Web searchesl