In Japan, an Odd Perch for Google - Looking Up at Yahoo, the Leader

Even the Geocities version for Japan is still online.

But google need not be too worried, the mother ship is in serious problems and when Yahoo! will bite the dust Yahoo japan will either go with it or their minority stake will be sold to the highest bidder.

Googles rise in Japan has been slow but steady, and in 2009 to date they've outperformed yahoo.co.jp with a factor of 3 in growth.

A similar thing is happening in the Netherlands with Hyves.nl and Facebook.com. Facebook is still behind but growing steadily, hyves is still top in the segment but it is only a matter of time. (unfortunately, I think that it is great to have some diversity).

I knew this story looked familiar; it's because TechCrunch covered it over a year ago.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/23/3-reasons-why-the-inter...

Unfortunately, it's a mis-leading non-story. Yahoo! controls 33% of Yahoo! Japan allowing a Japanese company to hold a larger share. The result is that Yahoo ultimately worse off than Google (who gets 100% control/revenue from the market share they control).

The worst part is that Yahoo's strategy is actually failing them. The story from a year ago cited a larger market share for Yahoo (and it still wasn't a good deal back then, compared to what Google had). The article fails to report than Google's changes (many sound like terrible ideas to me personally) are working in Google's favor.