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In many technological aspects, Japan’s got America beat.  Hands-down, where-is-my-robot-butler beat.  Which makes me wonder about the implications of Yahoo’s continued success in that country.

Yahoo Still Top Search Engine In Japan

Yahoo’s beating Google by a considerable amount - according to comScore, it received 10.2 million more visitors in the month of August alone.  Yahoo’s even doing well compared to the Japanese competition; Maru Sato, comScore Japan’s managing director, told bigmouthmedia, “Since our first official ranking in June, we have seen Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft sites remain unchanged as the top three properties in Japan.”

So how did the American also-ran manage to become a Japanese success story?  Well, the company didn’t unveil some special new feature set.  And I’m not sure that it has anything to do with different cultures.

Instead, as 24/7 Wall St.’s Douglas McIntyre wrote, “Perhaps the most important thing is that the company has several large shareholders including Softbank, a large multimedia company with interests in broadband, telecom, and wireless operations.”   Money and business connections are sure to have an influence anywhere, regardless of the land’s technological capabilities.

So take note: when our robot butlers finally arrive, Yahoo may not be their preferred search engine.