Budget 2001: Full Coverage

But often that's where the similarity ends. It's not just the language thatchanges: Yahoo's Hong Kong portal offers a horse-racing section, with aracing calendar and historical results for each horse with its odds ofwinning, a body of statistics known off-line as "the form." In Taiwan, thereis karaoke chat, where users can listen to others warble online, providingan experience akin to a karaoke lounge. And in India, there is a specialcricket section with the latest results and news on cricket stars.

As Yahoo expands around the world - it now has 24 local portals in 12languages - the company is varying the product to fit the place. That'sespecially so in culturally fragmented Asia, where Yahoo has created portalsin five places - Singapore, Taiwan, China, India and Hong Kong - sinceJanuary 1999. Executives say even more distinctions are likely as Yahoostrives to broaden its revenue base at a time when investors are growingdisenchanted with the company's advertising-reliant business model. Forexample, the finalization of Yahoo's purchase of top Taiwanese portalKimo.com (www.kimo.com) last week means the merged portal will eventuallytake on some distinctly Kimo traits.

Yahoo executives say the general managers in charge of each country have theautonomy to decide content sourcing, which services to roll out, and when toroll them. In India, for example, where few people have credit cards, Yahoodoesn't offer online shopping, while it does in Singapore where there aremore credit card users who are affluent and Internet-savvy. Ultimately, itis the country general managers who make "the final call on what to do in amarket and are responsible for profit and loss," says internationalmarketing manager Gen Shibayama.

Yahoo believes that granting so much autonomy to country managers will helpthe company capitalize on its global brand and technology while catering tolocal audiences. While the Internet has the ability to spread servicesacross the world, the media business can't be anything but local, andbuilding a local media business is more than offering movie schedules forthe neighborhood cinema or reviews for a hot new restaurant. "People want tosee themselves reflected in what they read," says Matei Mihalca, director ofInternet research at Merrill Lynch in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is a case inpoint.The Yahoo office is located on the 28th floor of a Hong Kongskyscraper and has purple sofas with yellow trim, Yahoo's corporate colors.The conference rooms are named after local dishes. In a large meeting roomlabeled "dim sum" with a view of the harbor, located next to the smaller"fried noodles" meeting room, general manager Alfred Tsoi explains hisphilosophy.

"Yahoo Hong Kong is (entirely made up of) Hong Kong people. We understandHong Kong culture. We don't need a U.S. dot-com to tell us what to do," saysMr Tsoi, a 47-year-old with a master's in business administration fromChinese University of Hong Kong. He previously worked at InternationalBusiness Machines Corp. and Lotus Development Corp.

Yahoo! Hong Kong's Chinese-language portal gets most of its news fromMingPao.com (www.mingpao.com), the online version of a Hong Kong newspaper,in which Yahoo has a small stake. There are small but significant tweaks tothe Web site compared with its English-language cousins.

Hong Kong newspapers generally favor big headlines and are full ofphotographs, so the Hong Kong portal has more photographs than most otherYahoo sites.

The day-to-day running of Yahoo Hong Kong is left to him, says Mr. Tsoi,though there are times when he refers to Yahoo's headquarters in the heartof Silicon Valley in California. When the Hong Kong unit proposed to take astake in MingPao.com, for example, "we had to answer a lot of things," saysMr. Tsoi, but adds: "the approval was real quick."

Often, the background of a Yahoo country chief influences the portal'sservices. Mr. Tsoi, with his experience at IBM and Lotus, championed andlaunched Yahoo Hong Kong's technology section. In Taiwan, general managerRose Tsou, formerly head of MTV Taiwan, instigated a music news section.