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Google searches for dominance

One year on, giant plays second fiddle to Seznam

By Michael Heitmann
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
September 12th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Business Manager Tatana le Moigne says Google is increasing its ability to "speak" Czech.
Czech Internet users can now observe the stars from the comfort of their office chair — even in broad daylight — thanks to a new localized service offered in the country by Google, called Google Sky.
But while the worldwide search behemoth is busy casting its web across the rest of the universe, a few countries on this planet remain unconquered. The Czech Republic is one of them, along with Russia, South Korea and China.
Google entered the Czech-language search market only a year ago, after it finally persuaded entrepreneur Tomáš Schel to sell the Google.cz domain. Previously, requests for Google.cz were redirected to Schel’s Globalsearch.cz.
The search giant has yet to pose a serious threat to Seznam, as analysts predicted a year ago. Seznam, which means “index” in Czech, remains the country’s most popular search engine and portal, according to Alexa traffic rankings; Google now ranks second in search, it says, with most analysts placing it a distant second. (Google does not disclose market share.) This is in contrast to neighboring Poland and Hungary, where localized versions of Google already top the charts.
That’s not to say Google hasn’t made progress. This year the company resolved a few language-specific difficulties, problems all too familiar for anyone who has ever attended a Czech-language course.
“Google search has ‘spoken’ Czech for some time and we continue to make enhancements and improvements for users here,” said Google’s business manager for the country, Tatana le Moigne. “For example, in May we introduced Czech stemming and morphology in Google search. This means we work with the word’s grammatical forms and we include other relevant transformations, like noun-adjective-verb.”
Now, a search query for “doplněk k svatbě” (accessory for wedding) will return additional results for related word forms, such as “svatební doplňky” (wedding accessories).
“Domestically, we’ve launched 10 localized products in 10 months,” le Moigne said. “That’s fast and it shows how important Czech users are to Google.”
Google has quietly made some inroads into the market. Google search has been added to the Web site of the daily newspaper Mladá fronta Dnes, and the paper’s e-mail service “klikni” is Google’s Gmail in disguise.
But while Google continues to localize its products, Seznam has spent years refining and adding to its own innovations, said company director Pavel Zima.
“We’ve improved Mapy.cz, created Firmy.cz as a directory for businesses and added image search,” he said. “Our advantage versus Google is our local services. Google will never have the regional focus that Seznam has.”
Internet united
Recently, the country’s third largest Web portal, Atlas, decided to partner with Seznam as part of an all-out effort to revamp its site. The company now relies on Seznam’s search capabilities, which have been re-branded for use by Atlas. The move sparked some controversy, and prompted the headline “Czech Internet unites against Google” in the daily Hospodářské noviny.
Martin Březina, Atlas’s marketing manager, said the deal was pure business.
“We discovered that our users jumped elsewhere to do a search and took action,” he said. “We had two options: either develop our own product or use an existing service in Czech. … We issued a tender and on the basis of that we chose Seznam as our contractor.”
Asked how a domestic Web portal can differentiate itself from globally operating companies, Březina said: “Atlas is a Czech portal for Czech users that offers quality content services. That’s what separates it from competitors like Google.”
“Internet players in the country feel the power and potential of Google,” said marketing consultant Milan Beneda. But he disagrees with the suggestion that domestic Internet companies are uniting against Google. His BenedaGroup.com, for example, gives clients the choice of using Google’s AdSense or Seznam’s Sklik pay-per-click advertising schemes.
Whereas Sklik reaches more customers in the domestic market and makes it easier to set a budget cap for an ad campaign, AdSense allows export-oriented companies to target specific audiences in any country of the world. Users from the country had previously had difficulties using Google’s service, however.
“We’ve recently improved payment mechanisms for Google AdWords and AdSense customers here so there are no barriers today for doing business with Google,” le Moigne said.
Borders have fallen for a few local IT specialists, too, who have moved to Zurich, Dublin or Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California.
“We just added a new Czech product manager in Zurich who is working on Google Maps for the Czech market,” le Moigne said.
But Seznam’s Mapy.cz remains the popular choice for locals, as the site provides the type of detailed information — nearby bus and tram stations and local pubs — that residents need. It’s the type of local knowledge Google will have to replicate if they ever hope to catch Seznam.
Michael Heitmann can be reached at
mheitmann@praguepost.com

Michael Heitmann can be reached at mheitmann@praguepost.com


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