The Japanese search engine market has an interesting configuration because controlled by an American company which is not Google: Yahoo.
I clearly believe that if Yahoo lost Japan everything is over for him because Japan may influence other countries in the Asian Pacific region.
Date: May 2009Source: Ga-Pro
On January the 23rd 2008 the results were the following according to the same source:
Date: January 2008
Source: Ga-Pro
So here we can see that there is more or less some changes. In more than one year Google took between 4 to 6%(Biglobe using Google technologies) and Yahoo lost only one.
MSN lost 2%.
As a conclusion I would say that the Japanese market is mature and recognizes only two search engines: Yahoo and Google.
