The Search Engine That Changed Everything
Saturday evening, April 11.
For the weekend, I’d come back from my school room to my parents’ house, and I was sitting with my family watching TV.
“Hahahahahaha!”
Seohee laughed so hard at the show that she seemed like she might run out of breath.
Even my parents snickered, clearly amused.
Yeah, it’s funny.
They really were comedians, so they didn’t hold back on their faces or bodies in variety shows, and that made the whole thing even funnier.
And with that, the variety show ended.
The screen changed, and an advertisement rolled in.
A handsome man—actor Lee Minheon—was shown in a crisp suit, reviewing documents before taking out a smartphone to check his schedule and send an email.
So it’s a Galleon ad.
It was the kind of commercial that played up the standard image of a “successful man.”
But at the end, it showed something a little unexpected.
For some reason, Lee Minheon picked up the Galleon smartphone instead of the apple sitting on the desk.
That’s…
While I was still thinking about it, the next commercial aired immediately.
This one was also a Galleon ad for Seongsam Electronics.
Only this time, it wasn’t Lee Minheon but actress Han Seona, whose stock had been rising lately.
She sipped coffee in a café, took photos with the Galleon, and strolled down the street with effortless elegance.
Then, at the end of the ad, she did something else unexpected.
She tossed an apple she’d only taken one bite from into a trash can and gave a charming little sneer.
That Lee Minheon ad just now, and this Han Seona one too… Seongsam basically declared war on Apple with these commercials.
「That’s right.」
People who didn’t know any better would wonder why apples kept showing up in these ads all of a sudden, but to me it was obvious: Seongsam Electronics was openly challenging Apple.
Still, these ads are seriously well made.
For one thing, the Galleon smartphone commercials had a completely different feel from the old, clunky feature-phone ads.
They gave off the kind of cinematic polish that made you feel like you’d become a more “smart” person just by using that phone.
“Wow…”
My younger sister Seohee let out a gasp beside me.
She couldn’t take her eyes off the screen and kept nudging me.
“Oppa, that’s the thing you were talking about, right? The… smartphone?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“It looks different from Apple phones?”
“That’s because it’s Seongsam’s.”
“Ah.”
Seohee’s eyes sparkled.
She looked exactly like someone dying to get her hands on one.
I grinned and asked, “Why? You want one?”
“...Yeah! It looks like it has a ton of features… and I really like actress Han Seona. She’s so pretty!”
Seohee nodded furiously.
Then I glanced at my parents.
In the old days, my mother would’ve slapped the back of my head and nagged, “Why are you talking about phones when your current one works just fine?” But the mood was different now.
“Hmm…”
“Oh…”
Both my mother and father pretended not to care, but their eyes stayed fixed on the TV.
Ever since I’d shown them the bank balance containing even a tiny sliver of my money, our family had apparently undergone financial therapy.
I could feel that now, in their eyes, curiosity was winning out over thrift.
“Why don’t you two switch to smartphones while you’re at it?”
“Huh? Well… my phone works fine, but… ahem, I am curious. And there was what you told us before.”
“Still, our phones are fine…”
“I’ll handle it. It launches tomorrow anyway, so let’s all go to the shop in front of the house and change ours together.”
If I’d been thinking only of convenience, I would’ve called Vice Chairman Lee Jaeyoung or Director Kim Hyeoncheol and asked them to send four units by courier, but if I did that, my address would be exposed, so I couldn’t.
Besides, they were probably both busy, and it would’ve felt rude to bother them with something like this.
“Ahem… Well, if that’s the case…”
My father coughed as if he were trying to act unconcerned, but he couldn’t hide the smile spreading at the corners of his mouth.
* * *
The next morning. In front of the neighborhood phone shop.
“Wow… there are seriously a lot of people.”
We’d left a little early, before opening time, but a long line was already stretched out in front of the shop.
This wasn’t even the middle of Gangnam, and I hadn’t expected a neighborhood dealer to be this crowded.
The response is more explosive than I thought.
I spoke to Zero inside my head.
「Yes, Master. The marketing cost Seongsam Electronics poured into the last two weeks is estimated at approximately 60 billion won.」
Six billion won…
「In addition, the flood of articles from various media outlets using frames like ‘the end of the feature phone’ and ‘you’re not truly modern unless you use a smartphone’ was highly effective. The fandom effect of the commercial models is also a non-negligible factor.」
The atmosphere was definitely different.
The faces of the people in line were full of anticipation rather than boredom.
They looked like people waiting for tickets to a brand-new world.
* * *
After about forty minutes of waiting, at last—
“Yes, your activation is complete! Galleon is truly an excellent phone. Please enjoy it!”
With the employee’s bright greeting, our family had warm, brand-new smartphones in our hands.
* * *
We got home just in time for lunch.
The kitchen was thick with the smell of kimchi stew, but Seohee, who’d gone into her room, showed no sign of coming out.
“Kim Seohee! Aren’t you coming to eat?!”
When my mother shouted toward her bedroom door—
—Mom, waiiit! Let me finish this first!
“Honestly… do you need me to come drag you out?! I’ll take your phone away!”
—Aaaah! Okay, okay!!
Only after my mother’s thunderous command did the door fly open.
But Seohee’s face was full of excitement rather than annoyance.
“Oppa, oppa! Look at this! The camera is insane!”
Seohee sat down beside me and shoved the Galleon screen toward me.
She used Clear Cam.
We’d only just bought the smartphone, and she’d already found the camera app.
Women really were different, weren’t they?
On the screen was a selfie Seohee had just taken. It was definitely soft and sharp at the same time, polished to perfection.
“Look at this. It comes out so pretty, right?!”
“It does. It came out really well.”
“Hehe… Mom, Dad, look at this too. I’ll take one of you!”
“N-no. We’re in the middle of eating, what do you mean taking pictures all of a sudden—!”
“Kim Seohee!”
Even as they said that, my parents hurriedly straightened up.
Both of them awkwardly held up V signs, and for some reason their faces were all tense.
“Pfft…”
Their stiff reaction was so funny that I burst out laughing before I knew it.
“Heh heh… Mom! Dad! Why do you look like that?”
“W-what do you mean?”
“J-just take the picture already.”
“Hehe… Got it. Say kimchi!”
Click!
Seohee took their picture on the spot and showed it to them.
My father even pushed up his glasses and stared at the screen.
“Oh… the image quality really is good.”
“Right? It even seems like the wrinkles are a little less?”
At that, I slipped into the conversation.
I wanted to brag.
“I made that camera.”
“...What?”
“You made this?”
“Huh? Oppa made the camera?”
“To be precise, I made the camera application. The lens was made by Samsung.”
“Uh… isn’t that the same thing?”
“A little different. What I made is technology that makes the photos come out much prettier than a basic camera.”
“I-is that so? I don’t really know what that means, but Oppa, you’re amazing…! Was this part of the business you were talking about back then?”
“That’s right. So don’t go telling other people about it.”
“Mm-hm, of course! I promised, didn’t I?”
Seohee turned the phone this way and that, looking at it with fascination.
Then she frowned a little and said, “But the internet seems kind of bad.”
“The internet?”
“Yeah. The text is too small to read, and if you try to go to Naver, it’s super slow. I tapped to read one celebrity article, and it took forever to load.”
Seohee pouted and set the phone down on the table.
The girl who’d been raving that it was “insane” just a moment ago had completely changed her tune.
Seohee’s only had a smartphone for two hours, and she’s already dissatisfied with the internet.
Then what about everyone else?
They’d spent a fortune because they were excited, only to find that the most important part—the internet—was painfully slow and inconvenient.
That dissatisfaction would stack up quietly.
Day one, day two, then a week. People’s patience would wear thin, and before long they’d start saying, “Smartphone internet is unusable.”
I took another spoonful of rice and smiled silently.
* * *
April 19.
Seongsam Electronics, Seocho headquarters, main conference room.
The meeting of South Korea’s top corporate executives was about to begin.
But the two seats of honor were empty.
Vice Chairman Lee Jaeyoung and Director Kim Hyeoncheol of the Future Innovation Office.
One minute before the meeting started, a hush lay over the room. The executives were pretending to look at their documents, but their thoughts were tangled and busy.
Sales records broken again just one week after launch…
They sold 31 percent more than the projected volume…
The Future Innovation Office is going to be riding high now. If you don’t get on that line, you won’t survive.
The vice chairman had always been compared to the chairman’s achievements, but with this Galleon project, he’s completely…
Then it happened.
Clack.
The door opened, and Director Kim Hyeoncheol and Vice Chairman Lee Jaeyoung walked in.
At once, dozens of executives rose to their feet as if on cue.
Snap!
Their eyes held a deeper reverence than usual, along with a trace of fear.
That made sense, because the results Galleon had delivered over the past week were nothing short of miraculous.
And the ones who had led that miracle were those two men.
“Please, sit.”
Lee Jaeyoung took the seat of honor and spoke briefly.
Only then did the executives sit down.
The meeting moved forward at lightning speed.
Park Seongchan, the newly appointed executive vice president of the Wireless Business Division, stood and began his report.
“Reporting. In the first week after Galleon’s release, user satisfaction has reached the highest level in history.”
In fact, he had originally belonged to the Future Innovation Office and was effectively Director Kim Hyeoncheol’s right-hand man.
But after the former executive vice president of the Wireless Division was removed, Park took that seat, signaling that the Wireless Division had, in effect, come under the Future Innovation Office.
“On the hardware side, the market has responded explosively to the fact that a PC-level multitasking environment is being realized on mobile. On the software side, the preinstalled Another Technology three-app package, as well as killer content like Crazy Bird and Clear Cam, which can be downloaded from the Android Market, has also driven huge demand.”
“What about FreeChat?”
“FreeChat is also spreading quickly among Galleon users. We can’t know the exact traffic, but it appears likely to replace text messaging rapidly, just as it has overseas.”
At Park’s report, Lee Jaeyoung nodded.
But Park’s expression wasn’t entirely bright.
“However… one complaint has been consistently confirmed.”
“It’s related to internet search, isn’t it?”
“Ah… yes, that’s correct.”
At Lee Jaeyoung’s words, Park answered immediately.
“The other applications are excellent, but the web browsing speed is far too slow. Data consumption is also high, and complaints about being hit with bill shock are pouring in. However, this is an optimization issue with the Android OS itself, so it’s difficult to fix right away.”
“……”
Samsung had managed to build the hardware somehow, but there was nothing they could do about Google’s software running on top of it, or the bloated web environment beneath that.
The executives began to worry about displeasing Vice Chairman Lee Jaeyoung with a problem they couldn’t solve.
But unlike their concerns, Lee Jaeyoung was thinking of something else.
So this must be about when Another Technology’s search engine launches.
Without saying a word, Lee Jaeyoung looked down at his wristwatch.
The hour and minute hands pointed to 2:59 p.m.
Before today’s meeting, they had said it.
At exactly 3:00 p.m., they would launch their search engine.
Can they solve this problem?… I wonder.
Honestly, he was half skeptical.
Even Google hadn’t solved the fundamental limitations of mobile web yet, so it wasn’t as though overcoming that would be easy.
And yet, he was also looking forward to it.
To the audacity with which they’d confidently said they would build a search engine.
“...That concludes my report.”
As Park sat down, the next person to report was Senior Vice President Seo Huieun from marketing, who was just beginning to rise from her seat.
“Marketing division report.”
But before she could continue—
[15:00]
“One moment, Vice President Seo.”
“Ah, yes.”
Lee Jaeyoung stopped the meeting.
He picked up the Galleon sitting on the table.
The search engine’s name was… Search, right?
Search. In English, it means exactly what it says: to search.
It was so direct it almost felt lazily named.
Lee Jaeyoung opened the Android Market and searched for “Search.”
Since there still weren’t many apps in the Android Market itself, he found it almost immediately.
Lee Jaeyoung pressed the download button without hesitation.
The file was so tiny that the download finished in an instant.
It’s already installed.
The instant the Search app launched—
Lee Jaeyoung’s brow furrowed.
...An error?
The screen was almost shockingly bare.
None of the things that should have been on a normal “internet main page” were there.
No cluttered banner ads, no trashy celebrity-news headlines, no constantly changing real-time search rankings.
Nothing at all.
Just a search box, shining cleanly in the middle of a pitch-black background.
That was it.
[Search: ]
It’s like Google, but… with a black screen.
The moment he saw it, Lee Jaeyoung understood instinctively.
They must have paid attention to display power efficiency and visual comfort too.
“Huh…”
Utter minimalism, stripped of every unnecessary scrap.
And before the Search app had even fully loaded, the keyboard was already up.
It was considerate enough to spare the user even the step of tapping the screen to open the keyboard.
Let’s search something.
His finger tapped out the keys immediately. The four characters “Seongsam Electronics” were entered into the search bar, and he pressed the magnifying-glass button.
At that moment—
“...!”
Pop!
Lee Jaeyoung’s eyes flickered.
Surprise spread across his face, which usually never betrayed emotion.
Buffering?
There was none of that.
The instant he pressed it, the screen changed.
The speed was overwhelming, like a photo he’d prepared in advance had simply appeared.
It wasn’t just fast.
This was on a different level.
...This is possible?
Lee Jaeyoung had already used Google’s search engine on the Galleon smartphone.
So he knew exactly how slow and frustrating it was.
But this?
Too fast, and then faster, and then even faster.
I’d end up using this myself…
Lee Jaeyoung tightened his grip on the phone and muttered before he realized it.
“Another Technology has… made yet another technology.”