I love reading the little hints that float around that show the small but effective revolution Google is pulling off in Japan. If you follow the news, you know why Yahoo is bigger than Google in Japan, but I’ve also been writing about how Google has been gaining ground by approaching the Japanese market through…
As some readers of this blog may know, I write a blog in Japanese in addition to this one. This newzjapan blog is a good place to get things off my chest and write about things that interest me or get under my skin. SEO or Search Engine Optimization is basically making your website appealing…
Until today, if you tried to watch a Youtube video over a certain length in Japan, you were probably given an error message. Starting today Youtube Japan is offering the longer videos broken up into sections, so that videos of any length are now available on all three mobile carriers. Most Softbank and AU KDDI…
Google Japan is going for laughs again like last year with their April Fool’s joke, but at least it ties in with the worldwide Google’s April Fool’s Day Cadie joke. Of course, you should take a look at CADIE’S Intriguing Homepage to get the idea. Japan’s version is a little less… pop culturey and a…
Today is a Japanese national holiday called Spring Day or “Vernal Equinox”. The Japanese name for it is Shumbun no Hi. It seems that Google Japan has gone with a nice theme that elicits images of Spring and Nature… using Eric Carle’s “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” as a theme for it’s logo. I have to…
I was originally planning to write this as a comment on Mashable’s recent post called When It Comes To Search, Yahoo is Big in Japan but it got too long as I read a few of the comments (some of whom were knowledgeable others did the pop-Japanology thing and generalized the whole country as “a…
Google-mania.net reports recent sightings of the Google Streetview car in Okinawa, as well as Hiroshima, Miyagi, Fukuoka, Aichi, Niigata, and Hokkaido. Various sources reported seeing the Google Streetview car in Naha, Okinawa, as well as Miyakojima. It waqs also reported roaming around Hiroshima City, Nagoya and Kita-Nagoya City in Aichi, Niigata City in Niigata, Ishimaki…
A blogger in Japan has written an open letter criticizing Streetview in Japan. Newzjapan thinks he’s off base. People in Japan have no problem with Streetview.
People on some of the social sites in Japan have been claiming they’ve seen the Google Streetview car in Kyoto and Tokyo! Anybody else see this! They’ll definitely have to blur faces because it’s illegal to take someone’s picture in Japan without permission.
Just today I’ve seen a commercial for “Google ‘ippatsu kensaku’” on Fujitsu cell phones about three times. Basically it’s the kind of search that automatically takes users to the top rated result for whatever they searched. The latest phone (the F906i) also features Google x Yoko-motion. Here’s a picture. Currently, most people in Japan have…
I reported before the tight relationship I think Google is developing with Japan’s mobile companies. More and more cell phones are using google as their default search. Spearheading this is AU which has tied it’s online email service directly to Gmail, currently offering 6GB of space. The new news states that all mail sent with…
I first saw this in the Google Mania blog here in Japan in this entry. April 7th is Astro Boy’s birthday so Google’s made themselves a nice Astro Boy Google Logo. A must see for fans of old school anime!