The English-language blogosphere predictably talks about the tech news that's relevant to us as the only tech news, but in Asia the technology landscape looks very different.

To wit: The popularity of Korean sites like Daum and Naver have two American Internet giants, Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO), teaming up in a bid to stay relevant in the Korean market.

Korea Times:

Google Korea and Yahoo! Korea announced plans Tuesday to merge their key Web services over the platforms of their digital maps and other location-based services, hoping that the enriched applications would drive up traffic on both sites.



Under the agreement, Google sprinkles video clips from YouTube (kr.youtube.com) on Yahoo's map (map.yahoo.co.kr), while Yahoo interconnects its local search service, Gugi (kr.gugi.yahoo.com), with Google's map (www.maps.google.co.kr).



The changes will be made this month and the content sharing will be extended to the international version of Yahoo's Gugi services (global.gugi.yahoo.co.kr), the companies said.



Korea has been one of the few rare markets where Google and Yahoo have struggled to stay relevant, with Naver controlling around 75 percent of the search market and Daum gobbling up the biggest of table scraps.

A smart move for the two companies: Market research company Korean click says Daum's maps gathered 2.5 million visitors in one week in January. By contrast, Yahoo got only 530,000 and Google did even worse.

See Also:

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How Yahoo Missed Its Asia Window