Naver deserves credit for its presence on Google-dominant scene: founder

 Naver, the reigning search engine in South Korea, should receive credit for its presence on the Google-dominant scene, its founder said Tuesday.

“I am proud to have built a search engine in our own language, allowing our own people to use the platform,” Lee Hae-jin, the billionaire founder of South Korea‘s top portal operator Naver Corp., said in a forum here.

Appearing after a two-year absence from the public eye, Lee said there are very few countries in the world where top search engine Google Inc. is unable to get a foothold.

“I believe that the power of a language would be reduced when the language is not browsed well, which will eventually lead to weakening the language itself,” Lee said.

Google has dominated the global search engine market, maintaining a market share of over 88 percent as of April, industry data showed.

Lee stepped down as chairman of the company’s board in 2017. Lee has since served as the company‘s global investment officer. (Yonhap)