Korea's own Naver search tool relies on a formula that resembles Yahoo! Answers more than Google's stripped-down power-search interface. I can't help but draw an analogy between Wal-Mart's refusal to alter its box-store retail model for the Korean market, and Google's refusal to change its interface and indexing/search formulas for this market. Both have failed to capture Korean market share as they'd hoped because neither did a thorough job of researching the needs of Korean users/consumers.

Web users in one of the world's most-wired countries seldom "Google" anything - they "Naver" it. Tapping a South Korean inclination to help one another on the Web has made Naver.com the undisputed leader of Internet search in the country.