The difference and similarities between Naver, Daum and Nate.

(Since there is abundance of information about those three main portals, I would answer specifically from a search-ads' marketer view.)

 To explain the similarities and differences of those 3 major sites in Korea, I need to start up with Daum because the most active online stream starts from there. Daum is the first portal which owned the most number of email users (so called hanmail) and online communities called cafe in Korea from 1995. Naver only started their service in 1999 and in every way they were the follower in the industry. Naver was 2 years late in providing email service and 4 years late in community service. Only for the search services are provided by both engines in same year in 2000. All the while Daum has been a dominant portal in Korea.  In 2002, Daum presented a new featured email service, at the same time Naver came up with a feature added search service called Jisikin (Knowledge in). In early days of the internet era in Korea, internet was used mainly for sending emails, chatting and being connected with people online via communities. Search services were there in any other portals but it was not well used. When Jisikin service was newly launched and people start to realize how they can use online service better as an search engine. Jisikin was the service is the sole feature Naver provides which differentiated Naver from others and it led Naver’s success. (Daum provides the search service as well in very featureless way.) Naver has been the number one portal site in Korea for last few years in terms of market share, the number of page views and unique visitors. Now Naver has the upper hand even in the number of users of Naver communities and email services. In Sep 2009, Nate launched semantic search as part of an effort to increase their market share and it helped them to increase their market share to 10% now.

 Interestingly enough, those three sites have similar home page UI. They all have log-in section either left or right side along with news and shopping sections. This home page structure has a thread of connection that those are not search engines but portals. At the same time, they are competing each other to be used by site visitors as a search engine. From 1995 to early of 2000, Daum was the top portal site in Korea, this is changed only because Naver started promote their Jisikin service