Google Strategic Opportunities
in Vietnam
Tai Tran
25 May 2009

External Criticism
• Google has been criticized to invest in
developing countries
• But what opportunities await them in the
rapidly developing country named Vietnam?

OPPORTUNITIES

Market
• High population: 84 million and growing
• Internet population as of 2008: 20 million and
growing
• Mobile population as of 2008: 21 million and
growing
• Young population
• A highly unsaturated market

Regional position
• Vietnam as a base to enter other South-East
Asia markets

High rate of Software Piracy
• Software Piracy devalues Microsoft’s and
Adobe’s products
• Google Business Model is immune to piracy

Language
• Vietnamese is Latin-based which probes much
less technical issue for Google than other
writing systems

Guanxi
• Google success in over-sea (out of US) markets
depend on their policies to comply with
respective local markets
• Google can act early to establish guanxi with
the government, agencies and publishers

Legal infrastructure for online markets
• Regulatory environment for online markets is
very loose
• Google can act early to (help) set the rules of
the game to benefit themselves

Yahoo! has weakened itself
• Yahoo! 360 fails
• Yahoo! 360plus struggles
• Yahoo! Search never took off
• Yahoo! Mail becomes too heavy
• Everlasting promises

Local forces are growing
• But still no Baidu, Tencent & Alibaba Vietnam
yet

Social Attitude
• Vietnamese might view Google products as:
– Channels for education & knowledge
– A cure for digital divide

Cost-saving vs. Opportunity

STRATEGIES

Product-driven
• Value chain: invest in infrastructure
• Economy of scope
• Minimal investment for (unnecessary?) local
products
• Customization & localization: Google
News, Gmail

Lock users in
• Dominate search
• Dominate videos

Distribution channel
• Partner with local ad agencies
• The partnership is flexible & reversible for
Google

A novelty look into the future
• Googlization
• Gmail
• Digitalize entertainment i.e. music
• GPhone
• Brand itself as an agent of open-source in Vietnam
• Google API
• Grab social graphs (can be hard considering current
progress of Gtalk & Orkut)
• Semantic search
• Enterprise 2.0
• e-Government / Government 2.0 (highly competitive)

Choices for locals players
Collaborate
Build Go vertical Compete
/ Establish
ecosystems / niché head-on
Partnership
Level of Risk

Thank You!
Tai Tran
25 May 2009
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