A sign is displayed on a Google building at their campus in Mountain View, California. (AP-Yonhap)

US tech giant Google has recently discontinued offering real-time popular searches in Korea, a feature long banned by its Korean rivals such as Naver and Daum due to the possibility of manipulating public opinion.

“We have decided to remove the feature from Google Search in Korea. The feature is no longer available here,” Google Korea said in a statement Wednesday. No further elaboration on the reason and timing of the suspension was given.

Naver and Daum suspended their popular search term features in 2020 and 2021, respectively, amid mounting pressures that they could be abused to manipulate public opinion during politically sensitive periods such as elections.

Google started providing daily trending searches via its Google Trends feature globally, and the real-time service only became available in Korea late last month. Daily trending searches remain available.

“Despite Korea making up a tiny 1 percent of Google’s traffic flow, they may be well aware of the negative sentiment toward real-time search terms,” an industry source said. “With the latest decision, concerns about the possible reverse discrimination against Naver and Daum have also been relieved.”

The source, however, said the feature could have boosted Google’s traffic in Korea which is dominated by the two Korean portals.

By Jie Ye-eun (yeeun@heraldcorp.com)