The SK communications owner of Cyworld announced to buy Empas, one of korean search portal in Korea on Oct. 19th 2006. SK Comms paid $82m for at most 43% in stocks by undertakingEmpas’s convertible bond. Also SK Comms buys Konan Technology, an exclusive search-engine partner of Empas too.

The Empas is the search-driven portal sites such as Naver and ranked the 8th in all of korean sites and 5th in portal sites. There was a rumor that Google will buy Empas whenever Google’s action goes to Korea because it is the important advertisement partner of Google.

At last SK Comms decided to do it. Nate.com of SK Comms has #1 sites such as Cyworld(social network) and NateOn (Messenger). For extending market share, SK Comms has been M&A strategy such as Lycos Korea(2002), Cyworld (2003) and Egloos(2006). But, it has very weak competitive in search service rather than Naver, Daum and Yahoo! Korea. So there has been rumors of M&A against Yahoo! Korea too. The SK Comms is a branch of SK Telecom the korean largest telecommunication company. So it has an afford to make a big deal in the market.

By acqusition of Empas, it is unavoidable the change of korean portal market share. Nate.com will get 2nd positions in Korea for unique visitors and page views. So it will be not able to be prospected in korea market.

Some of reporters forecasts that Paran.com, the branch of KT will try another M&A against Yahoo! Korea or Daum although the possibility is still low.