Yahoo Japan President Masahiro Inoue talked about Google in its interview for Nikkei Business Magazine, where he said Google products are a result of their culture of breaking laws. He further says that the competitors products do not excite him.

To answer the interviewer’s comment “By comparing Google’s services such like Street View and Book Search, Yahoo! seems not to generate surprising services”, Inoue said “Google’s those services are nothing impressive for me. There are tons of things you would do if there are no laws and rules. If you abide laws, your options are restricted. You should not do what you are not supposed to do”, reports Asiajin, one of the Top Tech Blog from Asia.

He remarked that Google do not abide by law and said, “Those Google’s services surprised people are all in gray zone. Advertising on search result was copied from Yahoo!, Street View is kind of peeping, Book Search is violation of copyright law, lots of YouTube traffic are illegally uploaded. You may say that those are cool. But can established company behave like that? In Yahoo! those projects should be stopped by legal section.”

The editor of Asiajin does not seem to be happy with Inoue words. He writes :

Overall, reactions to the article from Japanese blogs, tweets and social bookmarks are negative to the president. Net-savvy people have been loving No.2 search engine Google and its enterprising spirit. Many comments tell that they have never used Yahoo! in several years.

However, majority of Japanese net users never express their opinions on those social media, or never knew what social media is, and visit huge Yahoo! portal every day, click ads and buy things online. National clients also prefer Yahoo! for their ads maybe because Yahoo! Japan is such a conservative company.

GT Analysis: Yahoo Japan a Conservative Company?

Inoue is a happy man. Even though Yahoo is in problem, Yahoo Japan is performing good and Inoue is confident on retaining on No 1 position in Search and other Internet Services in the country. Yahoo is the gateway to internet in Japan, and it is believed that people search for “Google” in Yahoo Search to visit Google.

Recession has however affected Yahoo Japan but it has affected all its competitors as well. Inoue knows it well. But what he forgets is that Yahoo revenues might not bounce back, and it might start losing business to Google in future. Google has ambitious plans, a energetic team and a open mind. They can keep Yahoo Web Hosting in suggestion list for their Blogging portal “Blogger.com”, and still think they can beat Yahoo.

I feel, Inoue went too far to criticize Google. He should take Google seriously and if possible copy its ways of doing business. Yahoo Japan might be the last Yahoo company to lose to Google, but it can not save Yahoo the company from falling if it keeps its mind closed and run business in old ways.

Japanese might be poor in English and most good words about Google might not reach the Japanese mass. But this will not remain forever. Google has lots of Japanese fans and they create huge content in Japanese. This is in addition to Google’s own plans for Japan.

Inoue is certainly a great visionary businessman, but his thoughts might need to adapt to the changing time. Twitter and Facebook world has come, where information flow like crazy. He cannot stand back and expect Japanese to open a browser and type Yahoo always.

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