MANILA, Philippines - "Why just now?" Arlene Amarante, country ambassador and sales director at Yahoo! Philippines, quipped when asked to comment on Google's entry in the domestic market.
But Amarante was quick to add the move was very much welcomed by Yahoo! because despite being head-to-head in grabbing the bigger online advertising market share, the executive said both companies have been partners for a long time.
"Yahoo! has been here for the past five years and we've been educating [and] evangelizing this market on the Internet and the role it plays in their lives," Amarante said on Thursday.
"So having Google here is a welcome change because it's not only going to be Yahoo! that will be doing it, Google's also going to be doing it," she continued.
Google in January announced it is set to open up a Philippine unit to capitalize on the growing number of Filipinos on the Internet.
Amarante said the presence of tech giant Google will also help improve the landscape of Philippine IT.
"The industry's going to be a lot bigger, a lot better. So that's great," Amaranted said.
Yahoo! Philippines is set to launch a "new look," following an overhaul of parent company Yahoo! Inc. Amarante said Filipinos may expect this "new look" in a couple of months, as other Yahoo! pages around the world have already adopted it.
Yahoo! and Google, despite being rivals in capturing the bigger share of the online ad market, have struck partnerships for boosting Internet ad in the past.
Most recently, the two had a nonexclusive arrangement announced early February in which Yahoo! will be tapping Google's Internet ad network in a bid to accelerate the purple company's revenue growth.
source: abs-cbnnews.com
