Recently in SE Category

Read a summary of the press release.

Q1 Which areas of the service are covered?
Search engine and PPC platform technologies for the following 4 areas: web, image, video, and mobile.

Q2 How will this partnership affect the competition between Yahoo! Japan and Google?

Google technology will be on the backend, so users will not notice the difference on the search results page.　　
(Please refer to the search results page images below. Note that only organic results (blue) and PPC ads (red) will be replaced by those using Google technology.)

Q3. How long is the contract for? Is it renewable?
The contract is for 2 years, renewable every 2 years thereafter based upon mutual consent. This applies to both search engine/PPC and data provision contracts.

Q4. What difference will it make when Yahoo! Japan provides content data to Google?
Google currently collects data only from crawlers. However, if Yahoo! Japan directly provides their data to Google, updated pages will be reflected in the search results more quickly, improving the freshness and increase the relevancy of the search results and enhancing the search experience for the user.

Q5. Will the agreement change Yahoo! Japan's relationship with Yahoo! Inc. (U.S.A.)?
This change is limited to the provision of search engine and PPC data. Yahoo! Inc. will remain Yahoo! Japan's strategic partner for search and other services. There will be no change in the capital structure or relationship.

Q6. Are there any implications for Yahoo's business in the future?
Not in the short-term. In the mid to long term, this is expected to Improve Yahoo! Japan's search and PPC services and maximize advertising revenue.

Q7. When will the transfer take place?
As soon as possible.

Q8. Once Yahoo! Inc. (U.S.A.) completes the switch for YST and YSM, will they discontinue support for Yahoo! Japan immediately?
No. The development and support for YST and YSM will be continued until Yahoo! Japan completes the transition of search engine and PPC platform to those of Google.

Q9. Will there be changes to the usability of the search services?
The current interface will be maintained, so there will be no changes to the usability for users.

Q10. Have you consulted with Japan Fair Trade Commission on this partnership?
Yes. We have confirmed with them that this partnership does not pose any legal issues.

Q11. How will this partnership effect the competition among search services in Japan?
Even when Yahoo! Japan and Google use the same technology to provide search results, Yahoo! Japan will be customize the technology to their services. Similarly, the user interface of Yahoo! Japan will remain unchanged. Therefore no changes in the competitive landscape are forseen, including the status of competition with Google (Japan).

Q12. Has Yahoo! Japan used other search engine technology before apart from that of Yahoo! Inc.?
Yes. From May 1998 to March 2001 the technology was provided by Goo, and between April 2001 and May 2004 it was provided by Google.

Q13. Yahoo! Japan currently provides Softbank Mobile (SBM) with their mobile search technology. Will this be affected?
No. Yahoo! Japan will continue to provide SBM with mobile search technology and the mobile ad platform.

Q14 Are there any financial implications?
There will be no major impact or changes to the profit structure.

Q15. Will there be any effect on ad sales?
During previous ad platform transitions the effect was small.

What does this refer to?
1. Yahoo! Japan will switch their search engine and PPC ad platform technologies from their own Yahoo Search Technology to that of Google.
2. Yahoo! Japan will begin to supply search content data (auction, shopping, chiebukuro (Yahoo! Answers) to Google's index on a daily basis.

What influence will Yahoo's decision have on the Japanese search market?
Google's technology will be serving over 96% of the search queries in Japan. The market is currently led by Yahoo! Japan with 58%, followed by Google Japan with 38%. Google will also become the top PPC ad serving technology provider.

When will it happen?
"The search engine technology switch is expected to take place by the end of this year 2010. It is expected to take longer for the PPC platform technology switch because of existing sales arrangements with ad agencies." (Masahiro Inoue, CEO, Yahoo! Japan. Translation.)
*Note: The official press release from Yahoo! Japan says the switch will take place "as soon as possible"

Why Google, not Microsoft(Bing/MSN)?
"Because many of the services that Microsoft claims to provide in Japanese are still in their development stage." (Inoue, Yahoo!Japan.Translation.)

Read the detailed Q&A

Internet market research company, Borders and web marketing guide have released a study on uses of PC SEs and Mobile SEs.

Survey was conducted on 2046 men & women from teenager to people in the fifties.

More than 70% of the people use PC search engines but rarely use mobile search engines.

Only 0.6% of the people uses mobile for their main tool for search.

After the preliminary survey, they have conducted further study on 431 men and women from teenagers to people in the fifties.  They were selected from PC & Mobile Search users of the original survey. 

Out of these people, 92.3% of them use Yahoo! for their PC search, followed by Google at 74.9%.

As for Mobile search, 81.4% of them use Yahoo! Mobile, followed by Google Mobile at 49.0%.

[Thoughts]
From the study, you can see that mobile search is still not very popular in Japan and Yahoo! is still the front runner of the game here.

Google mobile search results mix mobile pages and PC pages now.

It used to display PC sites below the mobile site results.  Now that they are mixed, a cellphone icon is placed next to mobile sites and PC icon next to PC sites to differentiate the types of the site.

Google's decision was made to display results upon relevancy of the site content, regardless of their platforms.

When PC site is clicked, Google Wireless Transcoder changes the site page into simple HTML, easier to view on cellphones.  It also doesn't cost extra to view a PC page.

The honest opinion is that I wish I could buy a smart phone with a full browser capability!

japan.internet.com and goo reserach has released a case study report on emailing trend in Japan.

Study was conducted on 1,032 cellphone users, teenagers~50s in Japan.

To the question of "Which device do you mainly use for emailing?", the result was about 38% split for both cellphones and PCs.

To the question of "Which device do you have more email addresses registered?", almost 80% of the people answered "Cellphones".

About 65% of the people used emails on PCs first.  Considering the broad age group covered on this survey, the result might be due to the lack of cellphone emailing technologies back when these people started using emails...

I think this is a good proof of how cellphone dependent Japanese people are!