Google has overtaken Naver in monthly active users in South Korea for the first time, marking a potentially significant shift in a search market long dominated by the homegrown portal.
The crossover, recorded in July and disclosed Aug. 11, comes as generative artificial intelligence changes how South Koreans search for information. Google’s growing use of AI, including its Gemini services, is giving consumers an alternative to the portal-centered model that has defined South Korea’s internet market for more than two decades.
Google’s app had 47.02 million monthly active users in July, according to Mobile Index, a mobile-data analytics service operated by South Korean AI technology company IGAWorks. Naver had 46.85 million, putting Google ahead by roughly 178,000 users.
The result is notable because Naver has long been the country’s dominant internet portal, serving as a gateway not only to search but also to news, shopping, maps, finance and other online services. Google, despite its global dominance, had struggled for years to displace Naver in South Korea, where consumers have traditionally favored local platforms.
The July crossover was the first time Google ranked ahead of Naver in monthly active users since Mobile Index began compiling the data in March 2021.
Google’s user base has expanded rapidly. Monthly active users first surpassed 40 million in May 2025 and exceeded 46 million in May this year. In June, Naver still led Google by 245,836 users. A month later, the ranking reversed.
Naver’s monthly active users, by comparison, have generally remained between 43 million and 46 million since January 2023, suggesting that the portal’s user base has been relatively stable while Google has continued to gain ground.
Google’s Chrome browser also ranked third in Mobile Index’s productivity-app category in July, with 42.46 million monthly active users.
The gains coincide with Google’s aggressive expansion of Gemini and the integration of generative AI into search. AI can answer questions, summarize information and conduct research in a conversational format, reducing the need for users to navigate multiple websites or portal services.
That represents a potential challenge to the business model that made Naver one of South Korea’s most powerful internet companies.
For years, South Koreans have relied on portals as centralized gateways to the internet. Naver and Daum built ecosystems that combined search with news, shopping, entertainment and other services, encouraging users to remain within their platforms.
Generative AI is creating a different path to information.
The rise of ChatGPT illustrates how quickly that behavior can change. OpenAI’s chatbot had monthly active users in the 5 million range as recently as March 2025, when Daum had more than 7.6 million. ChatGPT surpassed 10 million users the following month and continued to expand.
By July, ChatGPT had 16.46 million monthly active users, about 2.6 times Daum’s 6.31 million, according to Mobile Index.
ChatGPT remains far smaller than either Google or Naver. But its rapid growth suggests that South Korean consumers are increasingly willing to bypass traditional portals when looking for information.
The shift is particularly significant in South Korea because the country’s internet market has historically favored local platforms. Naver built its position by tailoring search results, news, shopping and other services to Korean users, while Google remained more closely associated with its global search engine and browser ecosystem.
That advantage is becoming less decisive as search itself changes.
Instead of entering keywords and browsing a list of links, users can increasingly ask an AI system a question and receive a synthesized answer. For Google, that gives the company an opportunity to use its global AI infrastructure to compete more directly with Naver’s longstanding local advantage.
Naver is responding by expanding its own AI services and incorporating AI into its search products. The company therefore still has substantial advantages, including a large domestic user base and an extensive ecosystem of services.
Google’s lead should also be treated cautiously. The difference in July was relatively small, and one month of data does not establish a permanent change in market leadership.
But the significance of the crossover goes beyond the roughly 178,000-user gap.
For years, the question in South Korea was whether a foreign technology company could displace a local portal that had become deeply embedded in consumers’ daily lives. The emergence of generative AI is changing that question.
The competition is increasingly becoming less about which portal has the largest collection of services and more about which platform can become the starting point for how people find and understand information.
Google’s July lead suggests that, in South Korea’s traditionally conservative search market, that starting point may finally be changing.
