Google Korea said Tuesday that it appointed John Lee as its new CEO. He is scheduled to work for the company from early next year.

Lee holds a bachelor of science in computer engineering from Carleton College and earned an MBA at Harvard Business School.

He worked for British retailer Tesco, developing e-commerce system in Malaysia, and recently spearheaded marketing and business in China’s market. He previously served as a CEO of Clorox and Reckitt Benckiser.

The CEO post of Google Korea has been vacant since former leader Yeom Dong-hoon stepped down in August, allegedly due to the company’s weak performance in the domestic market.

Its market share in Korea’s search engine market stood at 4.55 percent, far behind the nation’s leading site Naver’s 73.44 percent and Daum Communications’ 19.68 percent as of October, according to research firm Koreanclick. Industry sources said the new leader’s biggest challenge is to expand Google’s leverage in the domestic market.

According to Google Korea’s rigorous hiring process, he went through several interviews with recruitment committee members and executives in Korea and Asia Pacific offices.

(shinjh@heraldcorp.com)