It’s Official Now. Google Announces Their Search Platform Provided To Yahoo! Japan

Posted on July 27th, 2010 by Akky Akimoto

Google Asia Pacific and Japan vice president Daniel Alegre announced [J] on official Google Japan blog that Google’s search technology is again provided to Yahoo! Japan.

According to the article, Yahoo! Japan uses Google’s search engine as a backend, is able to customize frontend in any way. Google emphasizes that Yahoo! Japan has freehand on how to display search results, what original experiences to offer.

Google also provides search advertising platform to Yahoo! Japan. It is said that the data of advertisers and ads are not shared between Google and Yahoo! Japan.

In return, Yahoo! Japan gives its popular contents such like Auction, Shopping and Chiebukuro(Answers) to Google’s search index.

[Update]

Yahoo! Japan also announced it [J, pdf]

Yahoo! Japan shows how much this change will affect on their search results page. “Only”(the release said so) the blue squares – organic search results and the red boxes – search advertising part on the new one, right side, are influenced by this time change. Yahoo! related keywords, links from Yahoo! Chiebukuro(Answers) and other Yahoo! contents will remain.

The Google’s side announcement on the blog was mistakenly opened at 14:16, then withdrawn until the originally planned 15:10.

See Also:

Is Yahoo! Japan Switching To Google Search? – Our comments in this morning

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Akky Akimoto

Leader at Asiajin
@akky is one of the first pro-bloggers in Japan [J]. He also leads Asiajin, writes for The Japan Times, consults for some foreign companies interested in Japanese web market. (please inquire to akimoto on gmail.com).

Tags: Japan, News // 8 Comments »

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  • http://www.alexkane.net Alex

    Why is yahoo doing this?

    • http://akimoto.jp/blog/ Akky Akimoto

      - Why not maintain YST?

      Y!J has been leasing YST from Yahoo! and does not want to put more development force into it.

      - Why not Bing?

      Y!J President Inoue told that Bing is premature, which is possibly true on “Japanese” search results.

      As most national brands now think Y!J first for their ads, I guess Y!J does not think Google as a threat.

  • http://www.alexkane.net Alex

    Wait – Yahoo Japan leases YST from Yahoo america? That doesn’t make much sense to me.

    • http://akimoto.jp/blog/ Akky Akimoto

      Well they are leasing Yahoo brand, why not search engine system?

      YST termination forced Y!J to choose another search engine which works well 1. with Japanese language and 2. handle gigantic traffic. If Y!J does not want to have its own, the most proven system is the Google’s. There are Bing, Baidu, Naver and some small Japanese ventures are runnning Japanese search services (NTT/Goo only runs mobile search).

  • http://www.alexkane.net Alex

    I guess I don’t know anything about how Y!J operates. I always figured they were part of the same company as Yahoo!, but from what you’re saying I guess they’re a separate entity.

    That’s interesting. It makes sense why they would switch to Google search now.

  • http://akimoto.jp/blog/ Akky Akimoto

    Well, that is how Yahoo! Japan explained. I do not 100% agree with that Google is the best choice for them.

    Some authorities support it and say that in this social media era sticking to search is lame. But I am unsure. I think search is still important.

    For healthy competition, I was hoping that Y!J takes over YST from US, or choose Bing and help its improvement on Japanese handling. Yahoo! Japan once announced that they would likely switch to Bing before.

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