At the end of January, Yahoo! will launch two more localized portals, Yahoo! Hong Kong and Yahoo! Singapore.
“We are serious about Asia. We have spent a lot of money to set up these sites with a lot of local content,” said Savio Chow, Yahoo’s new managing director for Asia.
According to Chow, the portals will be milestones, but Yahoo! doesn’t want to make a big deal about the launchings because it will take time to fully develop the sites to their potential.
Currently, the American Internet giant has 3 Asian country portals including Yahoo! Chinese, Yahoo! Japan and Yahoo! Korea and the regional portal, Yahoo! in Asia.
“The infrastructure doesn’t have to change that much,” Chow said. “We are not content providers ourselves but we are working with local content providers.”
Chow was the former North Asia general manager of Netscape Communications Corp., which shut down its North Asia offices in November of last year.