It may have been slow to jump on the internet bandwagon, but Japan now has plans to take the lead - beginning with beating Google at its own game.
Some are already questioning if Japan's lumbering bureaucracy can drive a serious challenge to the US-based search engines like Google. US satirical magazine The Onionrecently ran a mock story called "Earthquake sets Japan back to 2147". The joke was that the world's second largest economy is so technologically advanced, even a direct hit by the long-feared Big One would leave it 140 years ahead of the rest of the developed world.
True to a point: Japan's gleaming cities are models of technological efficiency and the country is synonymous with high-tech gadgetry thanks to the global brand-power of consumer electronics firms like Sony, Matsushita and Sharp. But some fear that Japan's hardware-heavy IT sector is headed for a large iceberg called the internet.
Famously invented in the US, the internet has generated many leading American-based content and service providers, including globe-conquering search engine Google. Now, in a sign that Japan fears being shut out of this fast growing market, the government has come up with an eye-popping plan to challenge the dominance of such foreign giants.
Saddled with an unwieldy Japanese title that roughly translates as the Great Voyage Information Project, the three-year plan puts Hitachi Consulting in charge of a group of corporate powerhouses, including Sony, NEC, electronics firm Oki Electric, telecom behemoth NTT and All Nippon Airways International.
The project, which has been allocated a budget of 14-15 billion yen (€89-94 million), will focus on internet search and information retrieval, says Toshihide Yahiro, a director at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). The ambitious aim is to go one better than Google by developing the next generation of technology for "information searching and analysis" and what METI calls "advanced internet services".
To give some idea of what this might mean, Yahiro cites the example of a young woman watching a drama on internet TV. If she sees a handbag she likes, she can use her interactive handset to find out where it is available, and the GPS locater in her mobile phone to locate the shop. Similar systems might be used to help credit card users locate restaurants that suit their health needs, among thousands of potential applications.
"If you search for information on Google, you get the same results, but our aim is to provide more tailored, personalised information for the individual customer," says METI. What that means in practice is capitalising on Japan's hardware platforms, particularly in mobile phones, networks and car navigation systems, while pushing for new growth in software and services.
With this in mind, the government paired its corporate collaborators into 10 partnerships, "each charged with a specific next generation search function", according to the Financial Times. One of the partnerships, for example, puts NTT Data with Toyota InfoTechnology Center and Toyota Mapmaster to "create an interactive, personalised car navigation system".
Behind the plan lies intense concern that the unstoppable rise of the internet has again exposed on oft-cited Japanese Achilles' heel in software and services, even as Japan's traditional strengths in hardware manufacture and engineering are whittled away by competitors in South Korea and Taiwan.
Samsung and LG Electronics have grabbed global market share from Japan by challenging its once world-beating dominance of consumer electronics industries. Coming up fast behind is China, already earning a name for manufacturing low-end products like TVs and video-recorders that once kept the Japanese economy humming.
With profit margins plummeting, Japan's leading IT firms have refocused on content and services over the last decade. Sony has built a restructuring strategy, with ambitious plans for online music and movie services. But even with these changes, some are already questioning whether Japan's lumbering bureaucracy can drive a serious challenge to the dominance of US-based search engines like Google.
"My sense is that something this fast-moving and innovative is not something the government can force," says Martyn Williams, a tech specialist and Tokyo correspondent for IT research company IDG.
He says the project is more evidence of bureaucratic nervousness that Japan is being left behind by the internet revolution. As the pace of this revolution picks up, expect more initiatives, he says. In August, for example, Japan's communications minister Yoshihide Suga announced a government-co-ordinated plan to replace the current internet with new, more reliable technology and protocols. "The ministry is hoping Japan will take the lead in developing post-internet technology and setting global standards," reported the Japan Times, which said the plan will be allocated 7.8 billion yen (€49 million) in the 2008 budget.
Japan is not the only country playing this game. France and Germany announced an attempt to develop a European-led search-engine in 2005, though Germany subsequently abandoned the plan. China, too, resents the dominance of US firms, but so far lacks the power to challenge them. But Japan, which has a long history of government-led high-tech initiatives, seems to be taking it more seriously than most.
Surprisingly perhaps, Google has yet to have the same impact in Japan as elsewhere. The latest internet ratings published show that Yahoo! is the most popular search engine there. Google is in a distant fifth place, although it is climbing the rankings fast. And its brand image is high in Japan: dispiritingly for METI, Japanese engineers this year voted it their No. 1 choice of employer. That's what they call sleeping with the enemy.
