All of this is interesting, but I don't think it gets to the central point of explaining why Google has such a minuscule market share in Korea. For insight into that, do a search of this blog for "Google" and read one of my earlier posts on the topic, including this one. I'd like to repeat some of the main points.
- Naver is not really an internet search engine, since it searches only Korean language materials and ignores most of the information on the worldwide web.
- Korea is one of four countries in the world, including China, Russia and the Czech Republic, that pursue this walled garden approach to so-called "internet search" Coincidentally, while the rest of the world was enthusiastically adopting an innovation called the Apple iPhone, Korea was content to use its own, Korean-language only mobile services for two and a half years before bring in the iPhone to this market.
- The popularity of Naver versus Google obviously has a great deal to do with language and culture.
- Conclusion: "Koreanizing" its home page will not do much for Google Korea's market share. Language, culture and mindset issues are never solved that easily. Perhaps a more focused approach, simply telling Korean consumers that there is a whole world wide web of English and other language information out there would be more helpful.