Japanese Companies to compete with major Search Engines

In a report from MSN Mainichi Japan, 30 large organizations consisting of the University of Tokyo and other large electronics companies such as Hitachi, Ltd., Fujitsu Ltd. and the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone group have banded together to create a new advanced search engine. The Japanese government is also providing funding for the major project.

According to the report (English), major Japanese corporations fear that the top three globally used search engines are US-based companies, and this may prevent other international organizations from entering the market.

The new search engine technology is said to be openly modifiable by users and other enterprises for specific needs. The search engine can be configured for example, to search for only specific topics related to medicine instead of general Internet information. Concerns that a monopoly is occurring was also a main reason for this major joint project. Google's censoring of information for users residing in China was also something that the group decided was control of information in a negative way.