[Screenshot captured from Naver Whale browser's preview website.]
South Korea's top search portal Naver has followed the footsteps of Google to release a new web browser called "Whale", in an apparent bid to guard its turf and check the US giant's growing influence among Internet users at home.
According to Naver browser's preview website, the South Korean company will launch a new beta-test program for Whale on December 1. "We concentrated on making complicated things simple," it said on its introduction page. "Users will be able to browse multiple websites in one window."
The new browser will provide user interface customization, allowing users to change its color and design. "It will provide top performance security, better than any other web browsers," Naver said.
Experts predict Whale would gain popularity because South Koreans favor everything "simple but effective". The new browser offers convenient one-click services linked to Naver services covering mail, search, news, webtoons, and web-novels.
In return, Naver would gain access to a massive amount of big data generated by its users. Big data would help boost the performance of Naver's search engine and related services.
With the Whale browser, Naver hopes to compete with Google which has released its trademark Chrome web browser in 2008. Chrome is the most used web browser in the world, overtaking the former champion, Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Chrome's function and features provide users with one-stop services.
Google has expanded the Chrome browser into Chrome OS, an operating system for its Chrome OS-operated budget laptop, Chromebook, which is cheap, versatile and widely used by students and businessmen around the world.
Aju News Park Sae-jin = swatchsjp@ajunews.com
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
