Shares of Korean internet giant Kakao slide after fire disrupts service - TechCrunch

The banal terms of South Korea’s net elephantine Kakao tumbled connected Monday aft a occurrence astatine a information halfway that chopped disconnected powerfulness connected Saturday, causing respective work malfunctions.

The blaze astatine the SK C&C information center, which houses the servers of Korea’s 2 largest net companies — Kakao and Naver — disrupted Kakao’s messaging, ride-hailing, outgo and crippled apps, and Naver’s net hunt and quality services, implicit the weekend.

Some disruption is ongoing — chiefly affecting Kakao’s services.

On Monday morning, Kakao’s stock terms dropped much than 9%. Its adjacent Naver besides slid 2% astatine the opening of trading earlier recovering.

At the clip of writing, Kakao said it had restored KakaoTalk, the country’s ascendant messaging app — with much than 46 cardinal monthly progressive users successful South Korea arsenic of September 2022 and 53 cardinal globally. On Monday day it besides said it had completed recovering its fiscal services. But immoderate different services are inactive down.

Meanwhile, Naver, which faced partial disruptions arsenic a effect of the occurrence connected Saturday, rapidly restored astir of its operations connected Sunday.

According to a study by Bernstein, Kakao’s dilatory betterment process was caused by the company’s deficiency of owned server infrastructure and “high dependence” connected the SK C&C information center. It besides highlights Kakao’s deficiency of a good distributed backup system. The study pointed retired that Naver was capable to resume its superior services promptly due to the fact that it has owned server infrastructure and a well-designed backup process.

KakaoTalk remains the ascendant messaging work successful South Korea and the Bernstein study predicts it volition support its presumption contempt the outage, fixed however acold down its rivals are successful marketshare terms. Additionally, it points retired that Kakao’s messaging app is linked to different services specified arsenic Kakao bank, outgo and ride-hailing services, truthful users are improbable to regenerate the app with little afloat featured alternatives similar WhatsApp oregon Telegram, per the report.

The 2nd largest messaging app aft Kakao successful South Korea is FaceBook Messenger but it has lone 3.9 cardinal MAU arsenic of September 2022. While Naver’s messenger app, Line, has astir 1.6 cardinal monthly progressive users.

In its connection connected Saturday night, Kakao said the occurrence broke retired astatine astir 3:30 PM (local time). It added that it is investigating the matter.

A connection by Naver connected Saturday day said it is alert of issues impacting its services arsenic a effect of the fire.

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol besides made nationalist comments connected Monday pursuing the incidental — remarking that a backstage institution operates KakaoTalk but describing it arsenic practically a nationalist communications infrastructure. Yoon called connected the authorities to analyse the nonstop causes of the fire. “I respect firm autonomy and creativity, but that is based connected the premise that the marketplace reasonably allocates resources and income successful a strategy of just competition,” Yoon said. “If a monopoly concern causes marketplace manipulation, the authorities should instrumentality systemic action.”