Yahoo-Kimo Inc (
"Searching is not simply a tool to search Web data, but the core of the Internet," David Lu (盧大為), vice president of search and marketplace and deputy managing director for Yahoo North Asia, said at a press conference yesterday. "Each time a user searches, there is a potential business opportunity."
Web-search advertising -- contextual listings, paid inclusion and paid placement -- is considered a hot market for portal operators. Spending in the sector was estimated to reach US$2 billion last year, and expected to grow to US$5 billion in 2006, Lu said, citing a report by MetaGroup Research.
Eyeing the huge market potential, currently led by Google, Yahoo took over search company Overture Services Inc last year, which allows Yahoo to expand its pay-for-performance search business by selling advertising links that accompany search results on its sites.
The function has bolstered income of Yahoo's Web search advertising to 20 percent of the company's total revenue last year. By introducing the system to Taiwan later this year, Lu expects Web-search advertising to become a major money-maker for the company.
The strategy will focus on small and medium-sized advertisers who seek to spend small amounts while expecting instant and large feedback, Lu said, adding this is suited to Taiwan due to the country's large number of small and medium-sized businesses.
In addition to Overture, Yahoo bought several providers of Web-search products including Inktomi Corp, AltaVista, Fast Search and Transfer, 3721 Network Software Co (北京三七二一科技) in China and Carde in Brazil, showing a strong desire to compete with major rivals such as Google, America Online Inc and Microsoft's MSN.com.
According to a report issued by Bloor Research Ltd earlier this month, 32 percent of Web searches in the US are conducted using Google, followed by 26 percent for Yahoo, 18 percent for AOL and 17 percent for MSN.
Yahoo still uses some of Google's search technology, and Lu said the company is considering whether to carry on the partnership as the two companies' contract will be due in the first quarter of the year.
As well as strengthening the Web-search marketing function, Lu said, Yahoo is developing Web-search personalization, which will rank Web sites or Web pages that are highly related to users' portfolios from the sea of search results, Lu said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day