Out there in the endless reaches of cyberspace, how many website addresses do you remember? Probably not many. That is why tools to find links-named "search engines"-were invented.

By connecting their computers to the Internet, cybernauts can roam the world. Purchasing books, flowers or tickets online can also make our lives more convenient. （photo by Diago Chiu）

A survey by the US's Internet Advertising Bureau shows that since 1997, over half of all Internet advertising revenue in the US has gone to search engine sites.

Search engines are a hotly competitive area of Internet technology. Taiwan's earliest Internet search tool was the Yam Web Navigator, created by Chen Jen-ran.

This commercial opportunity is attracting Taiwanese Internet entrepreneurs into the arena of information search services, and many international Internet companies have also come to Taiwan to set up Chinese-language search sites. Why is Taiwan best placed to become the "search engine center" of the Chinese-speaking wired world? And who will be the big winners in the Chinese search engine market?

Some of the biggest Internet-related news stories last year were the mergers of a number of Internet companies. For instance, America on Line (AOL), the US's largest Internet service provider, acquired Netscape, which made its name developing Internet browser software, in a deal worth a whopping US$4.2 billion; and entertainment giant Disney purchased a 43% stake in search engine developers Infoseek. In the US, the trend in the battle for the keys to the Internet market is for the big to grow bigger, but in Taiwan the market is just entering a "Warring States" period.

The GAIS search engine, developed by Professor Wu Sheng of National Chung Cheng University （center, standing）, is the technical power behind various Chinese-language search sites, including Kimo, Todo, Openfind and Yahoo! Chinese.

Last year the US company Yahoo! set up a Chinese-language search engine site in Taiwan, and Microsoft is also set to enter the Chinese website market. At present there are over 50 Internet companies in Taiwan whose future plans feature search engines. 1999 is shaping up to be a year of intense competition in Taiwan's corner of cyberspace.No golden eggs just yet

Why are Internet search tools such hot properties? According to the "Survey on Internet Applications and Usage in Taiwan in 1998" by the Frontier Foundation, the type of site most visited by Internet users in Taiwan is search engines (at 28.5%). The second most popular sites are those offering life and leisure information (25.6%). Taiwanese netizens' most frequent online activity is using search engines to find information (26%).

Internet entrepreneurs are naturally on the lookout for ways to make money over the Internet. A survey early last year by the Market Intelligence Center of the ROC's Institute for Information Industry showed that in 1997 Taiwan's Internet advertising market was worth around NT$35 million; this was predicted to grow to NT$100 million in 1998. In 1997, 90% of advertising revenue was concentrated among five leading websites-China Times Interactive, Sinanet, SeedNet (run by the Institute for Information Industry), PC Home Online and Kimo.

However, looking at the experience of other countries, commercial opportunities on the Internet have not thus far been as golden as was hoped. Research by the German branch of CVSI Services International, an Internet services and consultancy firm, indicates that companies wanting to earn money from the Internet must start out prepared to make losses. CVSI predicts that US firms will not start turning profits until the year 2000, and that it will take European companies even longer to move into the black.

"Everyone says there's money to be made on the Internet, but at present the only people we see making a profit are the computer companies which sell Internet hardware," says Alex Chiu, web director for Openfind Information Technology, which entered the market last year capitalized at NT$50 million. He compares the situation to the American gold rush, where the people who made money in the early stages were those selling jeans.

Sinanet general manager Albert Yen says openly that there is not a single Internet company in Taiwan which can honestly claim to be making a profit. For instance, he says, if Sinanet itself were earning money, why would it need to go to the trouble of raising NT$10 billion in capital from Taiwan and abroad, and preparing to float shares on the US stock exchange? "The Internet is a business for people with money to burn. Although the barriers to entry are very low, barriers to success are very high, and even the market number two has a hard time of it," says Yen.

"If we didn't go into mainland China, how could we call ourselves the world's biggest Chinese-language website?" Thus Sinanet president Daniel Chiang （left） is collaborating with Wang Zhidong （right）, president of mainland firm SRS, to pursue their common goals.

The PC Home publishing group, which launched its first website two years ago, recruited an extra 60 employees last year to develop its Internet portal business, named Todo. PC Home president Arthur Lee predicts it will be another two years before the venture breaks even.Investing in the future

However, Internet entrepreneurs say they are not worried by the losses they are making at the moment, because they are "investing in the future."

They also take heart from the performance of American high-tech and Internet shares. For instance, in mid-January stocks in Yahoo! Inc. were priced at US$317 on US markets, far higher than Microsoft at US$149 or Intel at US$135.

Entrepreneurs find great hope too in the remarkable success story of Yahoo!'s founder, Chinese-American Jerry Yang.

In 1994, when Yang was still writing his doctoral thesis at Stanford University in California, he discovered the wonders of the Internet, and began devoting all his time to it. To make finding information easier, he and some fellow students began compiling the addresses of websites from all over the world into a directory, rather like an Internet telephone book. To their surprise the directory, named "Yahoo!" after the characters in Gulliver's Travels, became an Internet sensation.

Their imaginative and innovative work was greeted with enthusiasm by web users and webmasters alike around the world, and traffic on their site grew to over a million enquiries a day. This put such a strain on their host computer at Stanford University that Yang was forced to consider setting up independently.

After Yahoo! caught the attention of venture capitalists, Yang and his associates redoubled their efforts, and retained an underwriter for a public share flotation. The price of Yahoo! shares has risen almost continuously since they were first traded in 1996, and today the company is valued at over US$10 billion.

The Internet directory created by Jerry Yang is similar to a library card catalog: websites are manually allocated to categories such as entertainment, sport or politics, giving users a clear overview.

The development of the Internet is expected to boost the high-tech industries. The annual InfoMonth exhibition at the Taipei World Trade Center is one place where competition in the field is played out.

However, the disadvantage of this approach is that if one is looking for more specific information, such as on "steroids" or "penicillin," one may not find these among the categories and subcategories of the directory, so the data one is looking for may remain hidden among the millions of web pages. Hence Yahoo! began working with Inktomi, developers of "full-text" search tools. Type a keyword into a full-text search engine, and it will list relevant pages by searching the database it has built up by crawling over the whole World Wide Web.The poor man's atom bomb

The secrets of Yahoo!'s success were in being the first search company in the Internet market, and creating the concept of an "Internet portal." Since then portals, which aim to be the first sites people visit on a trip into the virtual world, have become the web's most hotly competitive market.

Although the Internet extends around the world, language creates borders within it, and initially Yahoo! only served the English-speaking world.

The model created by Yahoo! gave ideas to Chinese entrepreneurs, and as Chinese speakers account for a fifth of the world's population, the market naturally has enormous potential.

Hence many Taiwanese Internet operators have set their sights on becoming the "Yahoo! of the Chinese web." This is why in a market which has only been developing for two to three years there are over 50 websites offering Chinese-language search services, attempting to become users' first port of call.

The earliest site in Taiwan to provide search services was Yam, which officially went online with its Yam Web Navigator service three years ago. Yam was created by Chen Jen-ran, who holds a master's degree from National Taiwan University's Graduate Institute of Sociology. When doing research on Taiwan in his student days, Chen discovered that there was a dearth of Taiwanese historical materials. After going to study in the USA in 1988, he traveled to Japan to collect materials on Taiwanese history, and while there visited the Japanese-resident historian Shih Ming, who presents a view of history supportive of Taiwanese independence. Because of this, in 1991 he was arrested by public prosecutors in Taiwan and charged with insurrection. This was part of the famous Independent Taiwan Association incident, which led to the abolition of Article 100 of the Criminal Code, under which insurrection was defined as a capital offense.

After the ITA incident Chen Jen-ran abandoned his studies and turned his attention to the burgeoning Internet. With NT$2 million in capital and a number of personal computers, he and a friend set up the Yam Web Navigator, a guide to local Taiwanese websites. Thus Yam came to be called the "Taiwanese Yahoo!."

Yam has also worked hard to set up websites for organizations such as disabled, women's, aboriginal and environmentalist groups. In the media, disadvantaged groups have generally had a very small voice, but Chen believes: "The Internet is the poor man's atom bomb, because the barriers to entry are low." However, he adds, if one does not make an effort, disadvantaged groups will not have the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of technology.

Yam went online only a few months after Yahoo!, but unlike Yahoo! was non-commercial, instead operating as a foundation. However, after three years Yam registered as Yam Digital Technology Company, and since last year has been accepting advertising. "Commercialization is only a means to an end, in the hope that we can obtain more resources to plow back into creating content," says Chen Jen-ran, who is the company's CEO.Traffic counts

Compared with Yam, which as a non-profit foundation carried no advertising, the Kimo website, which has been commercial from the start, appears a lot more lively.

In August 1997 software importers Sysware Corporation launched Kimo with services including Internet search, a web directory, chat rooms, real-time stock price quotations and breaking news.

Sysware president David Lu says that for a site like theirs which has advertising as its source of revenue, "generating traffic is the first operating priority." Where television advertising is concerned, the accuracy of ratings is often controversial. But on the Internet, says Lu, "How many computers an advert was transmitted to, how many times a day it was transmitted, and to whom, can all be calculated accurately. How much traffic your site gets is clear for everyone to see."

But how does one go about generating traffic? On the Internet, where everything changes so quickly, no-one has a sure-fire answer. Some people rely on content and some on service.

Kimo concentrates on operating "chat rooms" to attract users to its site. "The Internet is not simply an electronic version of the traditional media," avers David Lu. He says that in newspapers, television, magazines and the like, the content is compiled and edited by a small number of people; but on the interactive, real-time Internet, the content is decided by everyone.

He cites the example of ICQ, an online messaging software package developed by some young Israelis. Their formerly unknown little company was bought by AOL for US$287 million. This made Lu realize the importance of the Internet as a medium for chat and communication, which is why Kimo puts 60% of its investment into chat room software and hardware.

David Lu also habitually uses ICQ to hold meetings and communicate with employees, and to conduct interviews with reporters. "Today I couldn't live without ICQ. It would be worse than going without television," he says.

"Channel hopping is so easy on the Internet that you can't just rely on content to build user loyalty. You have to provide more services to make people feel a need to come to your site," says Alex Chiu of Openfind. Examples he cites include providing space for personal home pages, allowing users to send and receive e-mail free of charge, and providing electronic personal organizers-all these are ways of attracting users to visit one's site regularly. From feedback at the InfoMonth computer exhibition in Taipei late last year, Openfind learned that most senior high school pupils go online not to look for information, but to learn tricks for winning at computer games.Content is the bottom line

However, traditional media people still aim to satisfy users with unique content.

The PC Home publishing group, which has a separate website for each of its four magazines, expanded into the Internet portal arena in October last year .

When PC Home's first website began operating two years ago, it succeeded in attracting 80,000 visitors a day by setting up a "celebrity chat room" and providing free electronic news. "In trying to understand the basic nature of the Internet, we discovered that people's main reason for going online is to find information, and that won't change," says PC Home president Arthur Lee. He believes people pay more attention to information which has been processed and categorized, and performing this "packaging" work is the traditional editorial function.

"When people think of Internet portals they think of Yahoo!, but looking at the history of the Internet, content is the ultimate goal," says PC Home publisher Chan Hung-chih. In his view, Taiwanese website operators still do not invest enough in content. Hence Todo has set up links with the websites of 17 other print and electronic media organizations, in the hope of providing a one-stop center to satisfy web users' information needs.

"The portal is not the destination, but the starting point," says Chan. He hopes to enable Internet users in Taiwan to find all the information they need using only Chinese.

Many Internet operators are also making Taiwan their starting point in the Chinese-language Internet market. Their idea is to center their operations in Taiwan but to set their sights on the biggest Chinese-language market-mainland China. This is because compared with other Chinese-speaking regions such as Singapore, Hong Kong or the mainland itself, Taiwan is best placed to be a center for Chinese-language websites.

Sinanet, which built its business serving ethnic Chinese in North America, was the first company to show such ambitions.

"If we didn't go into mainland China, how could we call ourselves the world's biggest Chinese-language website?" Sinanet president and CEO Daniel Chiang says that over the past few years his company has been constantly looking for a partner in mainland China, and has now finally hit upon Beijing-based Stone Rich Sight Information Technology (SRS), developers of the "RichWin" utility software package, who have the same goals in mind.Reunification by Internet?

SRS president Wang Zhidong was invited to Taiwan by Sinanet late last year. He says: "We'd both been working on different parts of the same jigsaw puzzle. With us in mainland China and Hong Kong, and Sinanet in North America and Taiwan, each of us had put together a big part of the picture. Then when we considered working together, we thought we might just as well merge."

After the merger, the new company, Sina Inc., will have its headquarters in California's Silicon Valley, and Sinanet in Taiwan and SRS on the mainland will both be subsidiaries. Together they will launch the new "Sina" brand name.

However, some people feel that a website market strategy of targeting ethnic Chinese worldwide cannot succeed, and that "the Chinese market" is a myth.

David Lu jokes: "I wonder if they worry every day about whether they should lead with what Jiang Zemin has said, or what Lee Teng-hui has said!" And if Taiwan is referred to in a website's content as "Taiwan, China," this will not go down well with Taiwanese users either.

On the subject of differentiation of content, Wang Zhidong says that wherever a website is based, its content has to be decided by local users. For instance, in Taiwan and Hong Kong people are mainly interested in entertainment and leisure, spicy show business news and the stock market; but in mainland China the most popular subject is sport, especially football. People from Beijing or Shanghai often fall out online over the teams they support.

"At first glance it may look as if there's a global Chinese market, but with such a variety of different tastes out there, a one-size-fits-all approach just won't wash," says Wang Zhidong.

There are also those who doubt whether advertisers will support "global" sites.

"In terms of advertising revenue, there's no such thing as a global Chinese market, because advertising is regional in nature. Taiwanese firms won't advertise on a North American site, because consumers there can't buy their products," says Li Chien-fu, Yahoo!'s general manager for Taiwan.

Nonetheless, those who are optimistic about a Chinese Internet are still in the majority. Arthur Lee, who used not to believe that ethnic Chinese formed a global economic entity, has changed his mind since the rise of the Internet. "In the past, information and commercial transactions were separate activities. When readers saw a product they liked they had to go to a shop to buy it; but now they only need to make a few mouse clicks. Marketing and distribution problems can all be solved by the Internet," he says.

Last year at Mid-Autumn Festival, Sinanet worked with shops at locations throughout the USA to provide local deliveries of moon cakes, beef jerky, ginseng, CDs by Chinese-language pop stars and so on, ordered online by US-resident Chinese looking for some traditional festive spirit.

Whether or not a global Chinese-language Internet market really does exist, operators all agree that developing effective and user-friendly Chinese-language search engines is the first step that needs to be taken, and that Taiwan is best placed to be a center for such activity.

In Chen Jen-ran's analysis, since the Internet is a media channel, the degree of freedom and democracy where a site is based is relevant. The mainland is the least free, and Singapore has only 500,000 users. "Looking around Chinese-speaking regions of Asia, Taiwan stands head and shoulders above the rest, so it would be a pity if we didn't take the lead in this area," says Chen.

According to Institute for Information Industry data for 1998 on the number of Internet users in countries on the western Pacific Rim, the ROC is second only to Japan, and far ahead of other Chinese-speaking areas. In less than three years Taiwan's online population has grown to 2.2 million, compared with mainland China's one million plus and Hong Kong and Singapore's 500,000 each.Virtual chameleon

In Chen Jen-ran's view, as long as we have this temporary lead, the more players get into the market the better. "There needs to be a consensus among operators to first enlarge the size of the 'cake.' There's no point in everyone competing ferociously in a small market." As the mainland gradually takes off, everyone can compete fairly, and, says Chen, "It's impossible to predict how far the Internet will develop. It's like a chameleon-it will show different faces according to how it is used."

Wang Zhidong agrees that to date, no-one can predict with confidence what the character of the Internet will be, what commercial opportunities it will offer, how the market will be segmented or where its limits will lie. Everyone is constantly experimenting and feeling their way forward.

"The industry is already fighting for market share," says Wu Sheng, an associate professor at National Chung Cheng University's Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, and the lead developer of "GAIS," currently Taiwan's most powerful search engine. Wu says that the government departments which create the policy environment for the industry need to get on the ball with their planning. In his view, although the government is actively promoting growth in the number of Internet users, it lacks vision, and seems to be making little effort, in determining which areas of Internet technology Taiwan should focus on.

Examples of such technologies are Internet communications technology, advertising, secure mechanisms for electronic commerce, methods for automatic categorization of information, network bandwidth and so on. If only Taiwan can master a number of key technologies, says Wu, it will be able to hold its own in the market. Vision is the crucial factor, for Taiwan has no lack of qualified technical development personnel. "If Taiwanese graduates of US universities can develop products in the American software industry, then naturally we can develop things here too," says Wu Sheng.

Wu stresses that the mainstream of Internet technology has always been in American hands, but if Taiwan's policymakers can plan in this direction, they can develop a new high-tech industry for Taiwan in addition to the hardware industry. But they need to act quickly, for if we miss the boat we will once again have to tag along behind the West.Open Sesame

GAIS, the search engine technology which Wu Sheng led NCCU's postgraduate computer science students in developing, is the technical force behind a number of major Taiwan-based Chinese-language search centers such as Yahoo! Chinese, Kimo, Openfind, Octor and Todo.

Give this search engine your command, and like the genie in Aladdin's lamp it will send information from around the world onto your computer.

A special feature of GAIS is that it allows error-tolerant and homophonous searches. Thus, for instance, searches for "Clinton" or "Beethoven" will still yield results if the Chinese characters entered are different from the ones habitually used for these names, as long as their pronunciation is similar.

But if the genie says: "Congratulations, Master, there are 20,000 web pages which match your search," you may not be so pleased, because you will not know which to look at first. In a really convenient information store, the search software would not simply lump keywords and associated websites together, but would give you well-packaged information highly relevant to your enquiry.

Wu Sheng's GAIS is a supergenie: in the search results it presents, for each web page found it shows the number of times the site has been linked to (to indicate its level of use), part of the page's content, its file size, its degree of relevance and so on, to help the master choose between them and so find the most appropriate and relevant information. But Wu has no interest in the commercialization of websites. In his view, the information on the Internet should be freely exchanged and available without charge. The key technologies are where the real commercial opportunities lie, because they can boost the industry.

As the Internet becomes available to more and more people, humankind is undertaking the largest engineering project in the history of information-constructing a virtual, borderless, new information world. People are continuously putting real-world information such as newspapers, magazines, books, government documents and so forth onto the web, and the countless participants are also continuously generating information themselves.

In this age of the information revolution, Taiwan's Internet people are working hard at weaving their own patch of the web.