Yahoo! Korea is striving to regain its fame as a major portal in Korea with a renovated homepage which offers new services like giving its users easy access to other websites, including its competitors.

In a press conference held Tuesday, the global search engine said it will provide a service labeled “Quick View” to allow users to view information of other Websites from its new homepage without opening another browser, according to Kim Dae-sun, general manager of Yahoo! Korea.

The company’s homepage will also act as a social networking hub by enabling users to visit social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter with a single log-in onto its webpage.

“Different strong points exist for the country’s portals and the development of a win-win strategy will be possible when they are shared by the service providers,” he said.

Being a globally-recognized search engine, the Korean branch of Yahoo will use its network to increase the offered contents so users cane up-to-date on their interested subjects.

The service called “Today,” which will be located on the main page of the website, will also display news of the user’s in real time.

“I believe what we have announced today is an opportunity for us to present another ‘innovation’ to the local Internet industry,” said Kim. “We plan to provide an array of services, including social networking service-based search engine, mobile and those reflecting global trend by the end of this year.”

Since introducing itself as a Web directory in 1997, Yahoo! Korea grew as a major search engine in Korea by 2000. However, it saw little progress after it dropped from its rank a few years later, giving the glory to local portals like Daum and Naver.

By Cho Ji-hyun (sharon@heraldcorp.com)