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Naver (web portal)
Encyclopedia
Naver is a popular search portal
in South Korea
, with a market share of over 70%, compared to 2% for Google
. Naver was launched in June 1999 by ex-Samsung
employees, and it debuted as the first Web portal in South Korea that used its own proprietary search engine
. Among Naver's features is "Comprehensive Search", launched in 2000, which provides results from multiple categories on a single page. It has since added new services such as "Knowledge Search
", launched in 2002. It also provides Internet
services including a news service, an e-mail service, an academic thesis search service, and a children's portal. In 2005, Naver launched Happybean, the world's first online donation portal, which allows users to find information and make donations to over 20,000 civil society and social welfare organizations.
According to comScore
, Naver received 2 billion queries in August 2007, accounting for over 70% of all search queries in Korea, and making it the fifth most used search engine in the world, following Google search
, Yahoo!
, Baidu
, and Bing.
Naver launched its service in Japan in 2009, marking their first expansion out of Korea.
".
Naver was incorporated in June 1999, launching the first South Korean search portal that used an internally developed search engine. In August 2000, it launched the "Comprehensive Search" service. which allows users to get a variety of results from a search query on a single page, organized by type, including blogs, websites, images, cafes, etc. This was five years before Google launched a similar offering with its "Universal Search."
In July 2000, Naver was merged with Hangame, South Korea's first online game portal, and in 2001 changed its name to NHN, or Next Human Network. The combination of the country's top search engine and the top game portal has allowed NHN to remain South Korea's largest Internet company, with the top market capitalization among companies listed on KOSDAQ
.
In the early days of Naver operation, there was a relative dearth of webpages in the Korean language. To fill this void, Naver became an early pioneer in user-generated content
through the creation of the "Knowledge Search" service in 2002. In Knowledge Search, users pose questions on any subject, and select among answers provided by other users, awarding points to the users who provide the best answers. Knowledge Search was launched three years before Yahoo! launched its similar "Yahoo! Answers" service, and now boasts a database of over 80 million answer pages.
Over the years, Naver has continued to expand its offerings, adding a blog service in 2005, local information search and book search services in 2004, desktop search in 2005, and the webtoon(webcomic) service in 2006. From 2005-2007 it expanded its multimedia search services, including music and video search, Internet phone service and mobile
search. On January 1, 2009, Naver released its new interface.
:쥬니어 네이버) is a portal
site aimed at children similar to Yahooligans. It has special services such as games such as Dongmul Nongjang (Animal farm), Pany Pang, Puppyred, e-mail, etc., and avatar, educational links, quizzes, stories, jokes, and homework helper. Junior Naver utilizes a panel of experts and educators to filter out harmful content, with the aim of offering a safe Internet experience for children.
:네이버 만화) is an area that provides Naver users with manhwa comics and original comic pieces. Most significantly, it offers comic book
, genre fiction
, and free manhwa. Users must pay publishers to use their comic book
and genre fiction
contents. On the other hand, free manhwa, webtoon
, is provided by professional artists weekly for free. Moreover, Naver promotes amateurs to be writers of the comic series through the process of rising in status. Status tends to be raised by being selected as "Top Challenge Manhwa" after posting "Challenge Manhwa" as amateurs. Comic book
s and genre fiction
are provided by choosing either a flat rate plan or a meter rate plan. However, the flat rate plan can sometimes be limited according to seminal works. Users can either buy each piece one by one or buy 1day/7day/30day flat rate plan to enjoy comics through that period. However, premium works can be limited to the flat rate plan by publishers. They must be paid by a credit provided by Naver, and it is called "Naver Coin". Naver Coins can be obtained by credit card payment, wire transfers, mobile phones, and gift cards that Naver accepts. It has a ratio of 1:1 with Korean currency. If users are interrupted while reading comics by system errors or maintenance, the interrupted periods will be paid back by doubling their hours.
There's some criticism about the search results are usually display data in naver instead of good quality and accuracy. Also the search technology is not as good as google. Furthermore, most search results display advertisement on the top of the page which takes up most one page.
Possibility of Manipulating Ranking of Word-Search
In these days, there have been rumors about Naver manipulated the game ranking severely and it was once on newspapers. There has been a doubt in other area of ranking system, it is known to be the most manipulated ranking is game ranking. Especially, It arouse suspicion about raise the ranking of a game in a subsidiary company and lower game ranking of the competitive game in other company. In 2011, An article about whether naver manipulates or not has been a big issue for a while. According to the article "Why impeachment of President Lee not be an issue in top 1000 news?", There has been an about million of people who participated in 'Movements on Impeachment of President Lee', but ranking didn't even reach 1000th issue in Naver. After this article, 'Impeachment of President Lee' has been a top ranking for a couple of days.
Street View
Street view(Actual image map) services has been started in 2010. At the early part of this service, there has been a violent pictures such as bleeding people on the street has been an issue. However, all the images with problems has been deleted or updated with new images. Now, They are offering street view in Kyeongki-do, Seoul, Daegu, Busan, Daejeon, Ulsan, Jeju Island, and Dokdo.
Web portal
A web portal or links page is a web site that functions as a point of access to information in the World Wide Web. A portal presents information from diverse sources in a unified way....
in South Korea
South Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...
, with a market share of over 70%, compared to 2% for Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
. Naver was launched in June 1999 by ex-Samsung
Samsung
The Samsung Group is a South Korean multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea...
employees, and it debuted as the first Web portal in South Korea that used its own proprietary search engine
Search engine
A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information...
. Among Naver's features is "Comprehensive Search", launched in 2000, which provides results from multiple categories on a single page. It has since added new services such as "Knowledge Search
Knowledge Search
Knowledge Search service is an information-sharing tool launched in 2002 for Naver users. The tool allows users to ask just about any question, such as how to cook "ramen" or how to subscribe to international magazines via the Internet, and get answers from other users...
", launched in 2002. It also provides Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
services including a news service, an e-mail service, an academic thesis search service, and a children's portal. In 2005, Naver launched Happybean, the world's first online donation portal, which allows users to find information and make donations to over 20,000 civil society and social welfare organizations.
According to comScore
ComScore
comScore is a Internet marketing research company providing marketing data and services to many of the Internet's largest businesses. comScore tracks all internet data on its surveyed computers in order to study online behavior....
, Naver received 2 billion queries in August 2007, accounting for over 70% of all search queries in Korea, and making it the fifth most used search engine in the world, following Google search
Google search
Google or Google Web Search is a web search engine owned by Google Inc. Google Search is the most-used search engine on the World Wide Web, receiving several hundred million queries each day through its various services....
, Yahoo!
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...
, Baidu
Baidu
Baidu, Inc. , simply known as Baidu and incorporated on January 18, 2000, is a Chinese web services company headquartered in the Baidu Campus in Haidian District, Beijing, People's Republic of China....
, and Bing.
Naver launched its service in Japan in 2009, marking their first expansion out of Korea.
History
The word "Naver" was derived from the word "navigate" and the suffix "-er" to mean "a sailor of the WebWorld Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
".
Naver was incorporated in June 1999, launching the first South Korean search portal that used an internally developed search engine. In August 2000, it launched the "Comprehensive Search" service. which allows users to get a variety of results from a search query on a single page, organized by type, including blogs, websites, images, cafes, etc. This was five years before Google launched a similar offering with its "Universal Search."
In July 2000, Naver was merged with Hangame, South Korea's first online game portal, and in 2001 changed its name to NHN, or Next Human Network. The combination of the country's top search engine and the top game portal has allowed NHN to remain South Korea's largest Internet company, with the top market capitalization among companies listed on KOSDAQ
KOSDAQ
KOSDAQ is a trading board of Korea Exchange in South Korea established in 1996. Initially set up by Korea Financial Investment Association as an independent stock market from the Korean Stock Exchange, it was benchmarked from the American counterpart, NASDAQ.KOSDAQ is an electronic stock market,...
.
In the early days of Naver operation, there was a relative dearth of webpages in the Korean language. To fill this void, Naver became an early pioneer in user-generated content
User-generated content
User generated content covers a range of media content available in a range of modern communications technologies. It entered mainstream usage during 2005 having arisen in web publishing and new media content production circles...
through the creation of the "Knowledge Search" service in 2002. In Knowledge Search, users pose questions on any subject, and select among answers provided by other users, awarding points to the users who provide the best answers. Knowledge Search was launched three years before Yahoo! launched its similar "Yahoo! Answers" service, and now boasts a database of over 80 million answer pages.
Over the years, Naver has continued to expand its offerings, adding a blog service in 2005, local information search and book search services in 2004, desktop search in 2005, and the webtoon(webcomic) service in 2006. From 2005-2007 it expanded its multimedia search services, including music and video search, Internet phone service and mobile
Mobile computing
Mobile computing is a form of human–computer interaction by which a computer is expected to be transported during normal usage. Mobile computing has three aspects: mobile communication, mobile hardware, and mobile software...
search. On January 1, 2009, Naver released its new interface.
Junior Naver
Junior Naver (HangulHangul
Hangul,Pronounced or ; Korean: 한글 Hangeul/Han'gŭl or 조선글 Chosŏn'gŭl/Joseongeul the Korean alphabet, is the native alphabet of the Korean language. It is a separate script from Hanja, the logographic Chinese characters which are also sometimes used to write Korean...
:쥬니어 네이버) is a portal
Web portal
A web portal or links page is a web site that functions as a point of access to information in the World Wide Web. A portal presents information from diverse sources in a unified way....
site aimed at children similar to Yahooligans. It has special services such as games such as Dongmul Nongjang (Animal farm), Pany Pang, Puppyred, e-mail, etc., and avatar, educational links, quizzes, stories, jokes, and homework helper. Junior Naver utilizes a panel of experts and educators to filter out harmful content, with the aim of offering a safe Internet experience for children.
Naver Comics
Naver Comics (HangulHangul
Hangul,Pronounced or ; Korean: 한글 Hangeul/Han'gŭl or 조선글 Chosŏn'gŭl/Joseongeul the Korean alphabet, is the native alphabet of the Korean language. It is a separate script from Hanja, the logographic Chinese characters which are also sometimes used to write Korean...
:네이버 만화) is an area that provides Naver users with manhwa comics and original comic pieces. Most significantly, it offers comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
, genre fiction
Genre fiction
Genre fiction, also known as popular fiction, is a term for fictional works written with the intent of fitting into a specific literary genre in order to appeal to readers and fans already familiar with that genre....
, and free manhwa. Users must pay publishers to use their comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
and genre fiction
Genre fiction
Genre fiction, also known as popular fiction, is a term for fictional works written with the intent of fitting into a specific literary genre in order to appeal to readers and fans already familiar with that genre....
contents. On the other hand, free manhwa, webtoon
Webtoon
A webtoon is a less common term used to describe an animated comic strip that is distributed via the internet which are often created by amateur creators. Usually webtoons are drawn in full color and read in one long strip per chapter. They are commonly created using Flash, or a simple image...
, is provided by professional artists weekly for free. Moreover, Naver promotes amateurs to be writers of the comic series through the process of rising in status. Status tends to be raised by being selected as "Top Challenge Manhwa" after posting "Challenge Manhwa" as amateurs. Comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
s and genre fiction
Genre fiction
Genre fiction, also known as popular fiction, is a term for fictional works written with the intent of fitting into a specific literary genre in order to appeal to readers and fans already familiar with that genre....
are provided by choosing either a flat rate plan or a meter rate plan. However, the flat rate plan can sometimes be limited according to seminal works. Users can either buy each piece one by one or buy 1day/7day/30day flat rate plan to enjoy comics through that period. However, premium works can be limited to the flat rate plan by publishers. They must be paid by a credit provided by Naver, and it is called "Naver Coin". Naver Coins can be obtained by credit card payment, wire transfers, mobile phones, and gift cards that Naver accepts. It has a ratio of 1:1 with Korean currency. If users are interrupted while reading comics by system errors or maintenance, the interrupted periods will be paid back by doubling their hours.
Criticism
Search QualityThere's some criticism about the search results are usually display data in naver instead of good quality and accuracy. Also the search technology is not as good as google. Furthermore, most search results display advertisement on the top of the page which takes up most one page.
Possibility of Manipulating Ranking of Word-Search
In these days, there have been rumors about Naver manipulated the game ranking severely and it was once on newspapers. There has been a doubt in other area of ranking system, it is known to be the most manipulated ranking is game ranking. Especially, It arouse suspicion about raise the ranking of a game in a subsidiary company and lower game ranking of the competitive game in other company. In 2011, An article about whether naver manipulates or not has been a big issue for a while. According to the article "Why impeachment of President Lee not be an issue in top 1000 news?", There has been an about million of people who participated in 'Movements on Impeachment of President Lee', but ranking didn't even reach 1000th issue in Naver. After this article, 'Impeachment of President Lee' has been a top ranking for a couple of days.
Street View
Street view(Actual image map) services has been started in 2010. At the early part of this service, there has been a violent pictures such as bleeding people on the street has been an issue. However, all the images with problems has been deleted or updated with new images. Now, They are offering street view in Kyeongki-do, Seoul, Daegu, Busan, Daejeon, Ulsan, Jeju Island, and Dokdo.