Google services officially in Vietnam, eventually. Why and how?
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“Within the next 5 years, Google Vietnam will have been Google Indochina.”
Read the article here: Google’s Advisor for Vietnam
That article was all the way back to early 2007.
We are now in August 2008 when we receive this big news: Google has officially set their foot in Vietnam.
Where is Google currently?
Currently, Google has 3 web properties standing in top positions in Vietnam market:
- google.com.vn at #2, after yahoo.com
- google.com at #7, after 4 local news portal
- youtube.com at #10, after another 2 news site. Read more: Vietnamese bloggers go to YouTube chiefly looking for embed code
Source: Alexa August 2008
Gmail is second to Yahoo! Mail
Many Vietnamese also love spending time on Wikimapia.
A predictable and inevitable move…
No need to mention the localized version of the search portal google.com.vn, Google’s presence in Vietnam could be predicted since their AdSense for Vietnamese browsers has recently displayed contents in Vietnamese, and frequently with Gmail and Orkut.
An Orkut screenshot, click on the image to view the original version.
The 20-million-internet-user market is rich and potential to Google as well.
…getting over certain issues
It’s important to mention some issues with Vietnam market for Google
- Volume of frauds in AdSense from Vietnam
- Buyer habit
- Revenues the business expect to gain from selling advertisements to Google services
- e-Commerce law
(2) is changing dramatically and is driving (3).
We’ve seen signals to improvements to (4)
So I guess it is high time Google was here in this rapidly developing country.
News is just news, no news is bad news.
Or is it no news is good news?
What do you think when you know the news?
I’ve observed various reactions from people in the industry.
1. “Hitting the market first” is getting tighter it’s hard to breath.
Many service providers have aimed to push their products to the market before Google comes to Vietnam.
Now they do!
Any plan to pre-ampt Google would be extremely hard.
2. The non-technical users are not as excited as the technical communities
While most agree that Google search is powerful, many non-technical are happy with Yahoo! services including Messenger, Mail, 360, 360plus and other local service providers.
Another thing to look at is connection speed. Vietnamese users suffer from bottle-neck effect to international websites. However, even with that, Google search result load speed is surprisingly amazing with their distributed network.
So all in all, non-technical users have very few reason to celebrate
3. Technical communities are jumping up and down in joy now
Because they have established the habit of relying on many Google services.
Well I have two things to say
Firstly, I don’t want to be forced to use the localized version of Google without an option to revert to the international version. I have tested the result from Google international search and Google Vietnam search and they’re much different. I’d prefer the international version, thanks. And I appreciate that Google provides the URL google.com/ncr for the international version.
Secondly, I have to ask this: does Google really love Vietnam?
No I’m not kidding. You may want to know that Coca-cola doesn’t invest too much on marketing and market penetration to compete with Pepsi in Vietnam. They’re here to make locals aware of their presence and not to let Pepsi equate cola to “Pepsi”. You may want to know that Honda introduced the Click and the Airblade with heavy subsidy in Vietnam not to head on directly with Yamaha’s Nouvo series, but not to let Yamaha dominates the whole market. This is important to keep in mind because in Vietnam, “the web” is equal to “Yahoo!” for many beginning users.
We want to see how strongly Google will push the Vietnam market…
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Tags of this article: 360,360plus,gmail,google,How IT world operates,industry,orkut,search,search-engine,vietnam,vietnamese,wikimapia,yahoo!,youtube.
Last update August 22, 2008
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August 22nd, 2008 at 5:33 pm
A very thoughtful post about Google in Vietnam.
I don’t have much to say now. Vietnamese Internet users always surprise me. They love Yahoo 360, online games, Vietnamese news (with lots of ads), film, music downloading, etc. And now they just surprised me one more time: Why do they use Google Map Maker so much?
August 22nd, 2008 at 6:41 pm
Google is planning an event in Saigon. A friend just contacted me. Send me your email address so I can forward it to their rep.
August 23rd, 2008 at 11:30 am
Despite their technology background, Google is first and foremost a business. Why Vietnam? The answer is simple: revenue.
What’s the point of Yahoo being the market leader who doesn’t make a lot of money of out its standing? I can see a huge differentce in the way Yahoo and Google make money. And that’s why Google keeps growing while Yahoo is falling behind (and may disappear one day).
Ok, first of all, it’s about risk diversification. The US economy has experienced quite a recession recently and this somehow affects Google ad revenue.
Second, its about potential. Vietnam is the only large and untapped market left.
More than 90% of Google’s source of revenue comes from its advertising businesses, including Adsense and Adwords. Google’s problem is not that many Vietnamese don’t use its products. The obstacle is businesses are not spending big money on advertising.
If you look at Alexa Ranking (ok, it does not exactly reflect the market standing, but it says something about Internet usage), you will see that a lot of searches are coming from Google. Yahoo only takes the lead thanks to its wide range of poplar services, NOT including search. Even if Vietnamese don’t use Google search more often than Yahoo’s, it doesn’t mean that Google cannot do anything about it.
Think of it this way: Yahoo’s established its presence here for quite a while, and it’s spent a lot of efforts to pull people to its service. But the truth is many of us are still using Google’s products. Google is simply attractive. There’s a very nice saying: “Huu xa tu nhien huong”. That’s the point.
What Google needs to do, is not to compete with Yahoo, because there’s no need for it to do so. What needs to be done is that Google lets people know that it is HERE and DOES care about its “new” customers and shows local businesses that this is the way to advertise themselves on the net.
Any investment is based on potential. IMHO, the Vietnamese market has a lot of potential. It would be ridiculous if Google doesn’t come
August 24th, 2008 at 10:06 pm
@Khanh Le
Why do Vietnamese love Google Map?
The main reason might be that it’s a chance for Vietnamese to see where they are.
For other more developed countries, GPRS and map technologies are more common and the people are close to take it for granted.
While it’s still new and hot to Vietnam…
August 24th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
@Kevin: Sent
Thanks in advance
September 3rd, 2008 at 8:46 pm
@Hung
So basically you’re separating “Google products’ users” and “Google advertisements” in Vietnam, and you see more that Google will focus on establishing affiliations with Vietnamese businesses?
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