Ivy Wong: 4 reasons Yahoo beats Google in Asia

Jun 3, 2008

Ivy Wong joined Yahoo in 1999 as Hong Kong employee number one. (The office was so small when she came to interview that at first she did not believe it was the famed Yahoo of San Francisco.)

From that 800-foot office in Sheung Wan, Yahoo Hong Kong has grown to more than 180 employees and an enviable market dominance in many countries in Asia, often thrashing Google. (Last I checked, Google in Hong Kong had a dozen people working out of a temporary office.)

How did Yahoo do it?

Having left Yahoo (She joined tvb.com as COO six months ago) Ivy spilled the beans:

1- Local People: Yahoo hires local people who know the culture, not technical experts from California.

2- Local News: Yahoo News in Hong Kong was developed in cooperation with local content providers.

3- Local Search: Yahoo Search has been highly localized so that – for example – when you search for “Cookies” in Hong Kong you find the girl band, not sweet biscuits.

4- Local Tools: Building off the centralized platform, Yahoo works to adapt services to different markets. In some markets blogging is more important, while in others they highlighted auctions or travel.

In sum, Yahoo localized and decentralized to conquer Hong Kong (and much of Asia’s) cyberspace.

Discussion

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View Comments for “Ivy Wong: 4 reasons Yahoo beats Google in Asia”

NKS

I think that free email was a killer app in Hong Kong at one point and Yahoo was offering it at just the right time. I also think portals generally work better in certain markets, and Yahoo was a pioneer in this sense.
edmund

short article but up to the point.
for instance, if you look at yahoo knowledge search, it is completely localized (different than Y! answers in the US), and it attracts lots of hk users
thomascrampton

Hey Suresh!

Should we say Hong Kong has a Silicon Wet Market, then? Not quite so catchy!

I claim credit/blame for broadening generalizations about Google whipping Yahoo to an Asia level.

Ivy herself spoke only in reference to Hong Kong. (I will make that more clear in the posting)

Nonetheless, apart from Singapore, Malaysia and India, Google has less than 50 percent market share in Asia.

While Yahoo does not make up the full difference for Google's failure, the situation is strikingly different from Europe, Latin America and North America, where Google dominates.

Here's my stats (But open to better ones if you know of any)
http://www.thomascrampton.com/...

Great to get your account of what went wrong with Yahoo in India.

I would enjoy reading a good article on why Google India succeeded while Google China floundered!
Suresh Ramasubramanian

1. Nice to see Yahoo got their start in Sheung Wan as well :) Outblaze started out in a condemned wanchai building, moved to one right next to the sheung wan wet market and then on to the fancy new cyberport office (which was actually a bit cheaper to rent, I think)

2. Ivy's generalizing a lot - calling HK or even the CJK region "asia" would be silly - the different parts of asia are completely unrelated in market, demographics, and even which portal is more popular.

GOOG beats the pants off yahoo in at least some parts of asia .. like say India. And both of them have far far more employees in India (in quite swanky offices) than in HKG.

Where Yahoo lost out in India - at least employment wise - was a lot of management conflict issues a few years back, that caused a huge, huge exodus of some of their best employees. Amazon and GOOG picked up most of them, if I remember right.