According to Vietnamnet, Yahoo is pushing the boat out in terms of new product launches in Vietnam – a market of around 20 million internet users with a largely young profile. Only in April this year, Yahoo appointed Vu Minh Tri as the General Director of Yahoo Vietnam.
Vietnam is a particularly interesting market for Yahoo. It’s in the east where traditionally Yahoo has a strong foothold – and Vietnam is one of the few markets where Microsoft doesn’t have any presence – so it’s much more of a two horse race.
This year Yahoo has launched services via Vietnamese newspapers, working with Mobifone to provide mobile phone search – and appointed four local agencies to go and sell ads. Only trouble is, Yahoo doesn’t appear to have a clear legal status to do this. According to Vietnamenet, they’re operating on a Singaporean licence – which is a bit like a Canadian company trading in the US on it’s Canadian credentials I guess! But there is life in the ole’ dog yet in the east – that’s for sure!
Andy Atkins-Kruger
Latest posts by Andy Atkins-Kruger (see all)
- Launching our new concept – Webcertain In-house! - July 26, 2019
- Yes, the robots are here and they’re running Google Ads! - April 10, 2019
- Be prepared: A personal message from Webcertain’s CEO - May 15, 2018
Google thought about entering this market a few years back and offered Vietnam a country consultant as in like that of Thailand, Malaysia and Philippines instead actually open an office and hire a general manager like Yahoo did.
Since the consultant has no legal binding with Google, the Vietnamese could not touch Google. But as for Yahoo, they made a mistake of having a legal entity in the country, and the scariest part was having Yahoo Vietnam’s chief saying that they will obey the Vietnamese law (Vietnamese government don’t give out Brownie points for this and Yahoo users are wondering if Yahoo will give out their person account info to the government on demand).
Yahoo thought Vietnamese would welcome them with red carpets if the have a physical presence in the country. They are wrong ! Having a legal entity here would only make Yahoo less attractive in terms of privacy and security protection from prying eyes of the government.