Google Korea buys Korean version of Wordpress!

Google Korea buys TnC, a blogging software company who has been making blogging software similar to Wordpress. (Basically a Korean version of Wordpress).  I have personally tried their software and it is not bad to say the least.

Just like Google bought Blogspot, this might be a sign that blogging in Korea has just started.  As far as I know, South Koreans has a long history of community blogging, they have yet to develop as commercial blogs.  (Perhaps they are a little behind in that arena but don’t be fooled, South Koreans have their own “Wordpress” per-say and that’s just only one of the companies making a blog software.

Wordpress still leads and will keep leading the world’s blogging software platform but great buys like this will allow Google to re-create their own Wordpress market, starting with a beta test in South Korea. (I think they are testing the grounds before doing something similar in the U.S.)

I think this is a good move on Google’s part as their advertising network of Adsense and AdWords truly go hand-in-hand with blogging.

Even better than Google’s Blogspot deal, this TnC deal will be taking over the actual open-source blogging platform, not a website.

via mashable

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We’ve been googled by Web 2.0 Asia

Google may be ahead of competition in the U.S. and English speaking countries, but they still have much work to do in the international arena.

For example, Google has less than 5% of total search traffic in South Korea.

Now, Google versus Baidu?  Baidu is a pretty much copycat of Google localized for China.  (as far as layout goes)

Google will never be able to catch up to Baidu unless Google hires a lot of local Chinese people in China.

One thing about language is that you can never learn a new one so fast.  This goes for humans and machines, machines being a lot worse.

In this case, you can see how the localized version of Baidu brings way more search terms accordung to globalbydesign:

“Xu Ting”

• Baidu: 2,000,000 results
• Google.com: 1,440,000 results
• Google.cn: 1,330,000 results

Google has exerted a good deal of effort in localizing its name for China but it has not yet been accepted by the Chinese people. It may take some time. Some companies have chosen to simply use their English names in China, avoiding localization altogether, such as IBM.

Avoiding China might be the worst decision Google makes if they want to take a share of the biggest countries in the world.

[via] blogoscoped