Google buys Korean blog platform TNC

No price has been named, but Google has made a new purchase: the Korea-based blog platform TNC, co-founder Chang Kim wrote on his blog Thursday.

TNC, founded in 2004 by Kim and Chester Roh, has created a blog software product called Textcube. An earlier TNC platform, Tistory, was sold to Korean portal Daum.

Google already owns a blogging platform, Blogger, which it purchased in 2003. From a technological standpoint, it's not immediately clear why the company would want another one--although Kim likened his company to Blogger rival WordPress (and its parent company Automattic), the favorite of the open-source community, which could give a hint one way or the other. But more concretely, Kim wrote that this acquisition is in part to help Google get a bigger foothold in Korea.

"One piece of fact that my American friends have (a) really hard time perceiving is that Google is an underdog in this part of the globe," he said. "Korea is the world's sixth largest market in terms of Internet users, and yet Google has a market share that can only be described as 'minor' in Korea."

In spite of how wired Korea is, Kim added that there is indeed a place for Google. "I think the Korean web industry needs a player that can, as a balancing force, provide more options to the users and help create a more open web," he wrote.