Google has surpassed Naver in the number of monthly average users (MAUs) in Korea for the first time, signaling that artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping one of the few markets in the world where a homegrown portal has long maintained its lead over the U.S. tech giant.

According to domestic market tracker Mobile Index, the Google app recorded 47.02 million MAUs last month, ranking first in the productivity app category.

The figure was 177,837 higher than Naver’s 46.84 million. It marked the first time Google overtook Naver in MAUs since Mobile Index began tracking relevant data in March 2021.

Google’s MAUs in Korea surpassed 40 million for the first time in May last year and topped 46 million in May this year. On the other hand, Naver’s monthly user count remained in the 43 million to 46 million range from January 2023 through last month.

Industry officials attribute Google’s rise to the growing convergence of search and generative AI, which is diversifying the ways users seek and consume information.

Both Naver and Google operate AI-powered search services that display AI-generated summaries at the top of search results and allow users to continue exploring information through follow-up conversations. Google’s service is powered by Gemini, while Naver uses its proprietary HyperCLOVA X engine as the base large language model.

So far, Naver has strengthened its dominance in Korea by building its own content ecosystem comprised of content generated by Naver blogs and online communities. However, as AI search increasingly draws on a broader range of sources to generate complete answers, Google’s strength in indexing the open web appears to have helped improve the perceived quality of its AI-generated responses.

The Mobile Index data did not provide evidence that Google’s rise was directly driven by Gemini, but it showed the Korean app market is shifting toward generative AI. Chrome, which funnels users into Google's AI-powered search by default through its address bar, ranked third with 42.46 million monthly users, while ChatGPT climbed to seventh with 16.46 million, underscoring how deeply generative AI tools are now embedded in everyday app use.

With fears growing that Korea’s data sovereignty may be weakened, Naver plans to strengthen its AI-based search services.

As of the first quarter, Naver’s AI Briefing appeared in about 20 percent of its integrated search queries. The company plans to double that share by the end of this year and introduce advertising to AI Briefing as a new source of revenue.

“Generative AI will broaden our monetization opportunities over the long term,” Naver CEO Choi Soo-yeon said during the company’s earnings call on Friday. “As Korea’s only full-funnel platform connecting search, shopping and local services, we will create new growth drivers.”