The comparison site Become.com will take on Japan’s Transcosmos Corp as a partner in the battle for search and shopping Internet users.
Asia beckons, and Become.com plans to answer the call, beginning in Japan. InternetRetailer.com reports how Become and Transcosmos will form a joint venture aimed at collecting more users at the expense of Yahoo Japan.
In the report, Become’s CEO cites what they feel is a growing market for comparison shopping as the reason for their entering the market:
“We’ll be providing a unique comparison shopping service that Yahoo and Google don’t provide,” (Become.com CEO and co-founder Michael) Yang says. “Japan has a lot of pent-up demand for comparison shopping.”
More than 80 percent of Japan’s Internet users shop via the Internet. Become sees that as an opportunity to bring those users in to Become’s comparison shopping site and also lead them to use its search engine.
Become has history in the comparison site arena. Both Mr. Yang and co-founder Yeogirl Yun developed and launched MySimon, a shopping engine that is now under the CNET umbrella. Yahoo has been active in the online storefront and shopping market for quite a few years, and poses a strong opponent for Become’s efforts.
Google’s Froogle shopping and comparison site has not been as wildly successful as some of its other products like Gmail. Become hopes that Transcosmos’ previous success at helping US companies transition into the Japanese online market will give it a shot at surpassing Google and drawing level with Yahoo.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
