New York Times, November 29, 2009
[floatr][/floatr]In 2001, a fledgling Internet company named Google opened its first overseas office in Japan, eager to tap a huge technology market.
But after eight years, Japan is one of a few major countries Google has yet to conquer. The Web giant still trails far behind Yahoo Japan, the front-runner here, operated by the Japanese telecommunications giant Softbank.
In a reversal of the rivalry in the United States, Yahoo Japan dominates Japan's Web search market with 56.5 percent of all queries, according to the Internet research company, GA-Pro. Google, at 33.7 percent, is a distant second.
[...]
"Yahoo Japan is a Japanese company, and most of their employees are Japanese people who fluently understand how the Japanese mind-set and business work," said Nobuyuki Hayashi, a technology analyst. "But Google's still a foreigner who's learned how to speak some Japanese."
(Full Story)
There are some interesting points in the article but definitely some good ol' nihonjinron too. Yahoo has certainly managed to keep a large part of the search market here and it will be interesting to watch as Google tries to grab more of that share.
Personally I think it's much more likely that if much of what you see is like this you just become accustomed to it...
