Yahoo and Google's contract is set to expire at the end of March 2025. To decide whether to renew it, the Japanese company has begun an internal technical review.
Z Holdings, the owner of Yahoo Japan, announced plans to merge Yahoo and LINE in October and create a new company, LINE Yahoo. LINE Yahoo’s major shareholder is Naver, a South Korean internet service provider that controls more than 60% of the domestic search market.
Naver is looking to develop search technology that integrates generative AI to export to Japan and other countries where LINE is popular. Observers will wait to see if Yahoo Japan switches its search engine provider from Google to Naver.
According to Z Holdings, Yahoo signed a contract with Google Asia Pacific in July 2020. Under the agreement, Yahoo Japan is free to develop and integrate additional functions to differentiate its search results from competitors.
Yahoo began testing some of its services, such as search, in mid-May, according to Nikkei. The company tested the impact of the search engine change by running a small portion of searches under unusual conditions.
The Japanese government is also monitoring the impact of Yahoo's search contractor switch. With the rapid development of AI-integrated search engines, it could impact user privacy protection and economic security.
(According to Nikkei)
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