The news is that Line and Yahoo have decided to join hands in order to compete with Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple. So I post my usual thoughts.

Naver is a search engine and web portal in Korea.
'Web portal' is a site created for users to go through by default. Naver has been the gateway to the World wide web for Koreans for over 15 years. Therefore, Naver is really powerful in Korea.
However, I have long since refrained from using Naver. The reason for this is as follows.

Information bias

I search something in Naver, The search results show ad links, Naver blogs, Naver knowledgeiNs, Naver shopping, etc. As there is no external site, only Naver's service comes out. This is close to Naver internal search. It means that Naver is not functioning as a search engine.

Low quality information

As mentioned above, the most common search results in Naver are Naver blogs and Naver knowledgeiNs. However, as blogs make money, everyone started blogging, and there are a lot of fake posts that list only keywords to expose to the top, or advertising posts. KnowledgeiNs is also flooded with advertising answers. Because of this serious level of information deterioration, more and more users are throwing away Naver. Not only users, but well-known bloggers have already moved their blogs to WordPress, Medium, etc.
The Naver blog intentionally prevents exposure to Google. But that policy prevents garbage posts from appearing in Google Search. Thank you rather!

Information distortion

Naver provides a service called real-time search terms. It shows the ranking by counting the number of searches for a keyword in real time. Naver is constantly receiving allegations of manipulation of this real-time search term. But I won't mention this because it's not clear.
Naver describes the real-time terms search service as "The purpose of the service is to aggregate the frequency of searches by a large number of users and show the trend of opinion as it is." However, in recent years, real-time search terms are dominated by advertisements as companies conduct 'real-time search terms marketing'.

Real-time search terms marketing
: It is marketing that benefits customers who searched a specific keyword in Naver at a certain time.

The keyword searched like this is contrary to the intention of the service. As a result, distorted information is being delivered to users who want to know the current issue.

Conclusion

Kakao merges with daum and gradually regains its position as a portal. This is also messy, because it uses the strategy of tying daum on KakaoTalk. Nevertheless, if Naver is distracted and continues this downturn, Naver may give Daum a first place again. (In fact, this first place in Korea is meaningless, because everybody is going to go to Google.)