By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry
Japan’s biggest e-commerce company Rakuten has announced it teamed up with Google Japan to bring Google Adsense to various Rakuten properties. Under the deal, the Google ads will be placed: in the Rakuten toolbar on the PC (from May 10) on Infoseek on the PC, Rakuten’s web portal (from...
The saga between Rakuten and major Japanese TV broadcaster TBS has finally come to an end. After years of battling out in court (and on the Tokyo Stock Exchange), TBS has bought back Rakuten’s entire 19.94% stake yesterday. The purchase ended a capital partnership, which began back in 2005...
Rakuten president Hiroshi Mikitani said in an interview he gave to The Nikkei that his company will enter a handful of countries in Europe plus Brazil and India this year. According to Mikitani, further acquisitions in those markets are possible, too. These countries would follow Japan, China...
CyberAgent (its investment subsidiary CyberAgent Ventures, to be more precise) has invested $1 million in iPeen, a Taiwanese e-commerce site. iPeen offers information on a total of 85,000 Taiwanese restaurants and offers discount coupons to its members. Taiwanese news site Focus Taiwan reports that...
Kakaku has announced the launch of a new version of Tabelog, its popular restaurant search and rating service, for the iPhone. Version 4 enables iPhone users to contribute information, reviews and pictures to a given restaurant in Japan directly through their handsets (download). Kakaku has also...
CyberAgent is continuing to invest in Asia-based web startups. According to Japanese business daily The Nikkei, CyberAgent just invested US$700,000 in Tokopedia, a Jakarta-based e-commerce start-up. This is the third investment the company received, following rounds involving Indonesia’s PT...
By Dr. Serkan Toto – On Japan's Game Industry