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Whale

On Mar. 14, South Korean web portal company Naver released Whale, a new web browser, raising the question of how it will affect competition in South Korea’s web browser market, which is dominated by Google Chrome and Microsoft Internet Explorer.

On Mar. 14, Naver released the PC version of Whale on its website (whale.naver.com). The program is available for anyone to download. The browser’s mobile version is scheduled to be released in the second half of the year.

Just like Chrome and Opera, Whale was built on Chromium, an open-source program. The browser’s features include omni tasking, which allows users to divide a window into several panes for different tasks; quick search, which provides immediate search results when a user drags a selected word; and “Papago,” which shows users a translated version of documents in foreign languages. Other advantages of the browser are a smart phone-shaped window that preserves the original format of documents designed for mobile phones and the sidebar on the right, which makes it easy to keep tabs on the weather, the time, exchange rates and stock prices.

Naver developed Whale as part of its goal of becoming a technology-centered global company. By acquiring a web browser, which acts as a portal linking people and the cyber world, Naver’s strategy is to increase the range and quality of its services. Naver is also planning to create an exclusive web store that will carry browser applications providing services such as translation, calendar, video, chatting, games and clipping.

“For about three months of closed beta testing, we collected users’ opinions and increased stability,” Naver said.

By Kim Jae-seob, staff reporter

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