DigiHunter

Daum beats Google Maps and Street View to the chase

Nov 18, 2008 10:39

Google is facing tough challenges in Korea again even while it is doing a great job in international markets. After Google released its online map service, this brought huge impact on mobile devices and many applications have since been created and developed together with GPS.

However, Google Korea doesn't offer Google Maps service in Korea due to some restrictions by the Korean Government (as the server that contains map data must be located in Korea.)

Yesterday, the second-largest local portal site, Daum, announced its new map services called Sky View and Street View. The style of service is pretty much the same as Google's, but it is providing more accurate and detailed images on both map services compared with Google.

Google uses satellite pictures for its map service, but Daum takes maps for its Sky View by airplane, which claims to deliver high-resolution pictures. The same goes for the Street View service.

If we go with accurate numbers for the maps, I find Google, Yahoo and MS providing 60cm level of maps, but Daum can claim up to 25cm level. However, by government law, it is servicing 50cm levels. Here is a sample picture which shows those few centimeter differences.


Left: Daum by 25cm; right: Google by 1m.


Sky View + Street View.

Daum says you can read road signs ath 25cm level of resolution and its map is about two times higher in resolution than Google's. It seems Google Korea is also preparing a map service for the Korean market and it will be interesting to see how it is going to meet the local giant's challenge. What Google has to bear in mind as well is that Korea's No.1 portal Naver is also preparing a similar map service to defend its market share in Korea.


Street View + Zoom up.

Daum and Naver are starting map services to enter the mobile application and content markets after they monitor the overseas market situation, like how those maps are used on the iPhone, Android phones and smart phones. The smart phone market is slowly growing in Korea and portable devices are starting to support Wi-Fi to access the Internet while on-the-go.

Korean customers are starting to request more quality Internet services and content after seeing those GPS + online map services which already exist overseas.



It seems Google may lose another of its strategy soon in Korea, which means it will have a really hard time claiming market share in Korea.

Korea is strange market since Apple Ipod claims less than 20% of market share and Google market share is around 10% in Korea too. Maybe, we have own words and those contents/DB cannot be generated insight and that makes Google¡¯s search result cannot commit Koreans.

Google started Knol service from overseas but it should be required in Korea too. Naver and Daum started similar services from few years back and it is their best strategy at this moment.

 

Whatever, whoever, do those services it is always welcome from customer point of view. Just wondering which device will use those map related applications what it will be? If those services also based on ActiveX¡¦.WinMobile or iPhone will be useless at all¡¦

 

Daum will launch this map service from early December, will report back on this again.

 

*Daum deleted all the faces and car plates from the pictures. (Learn from Google's cases)

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