Naver (
Hangul: 네이버) is a popular
sponsored advertisement portal in
South Korea, owned by
Naver Corporation. Naver was launched in June 1999 by ex-
Samsung employees, and it debuted as the first Web portal in South Korea that used its own proprietary
search engine. Among Naver's features is "Comprehensive Search", launched in 2000, which provides results from multiple categories on a single page. It has since added new services such as "
Knowledge Search", launched in 2002. It also provides
Internet services including a news service, an e-mail service, an academic thesis search service, and a children's portal. In 2005, Naver launched Happybean, the world's first online donation portal, which allows users to find information and make donations to over 20,000 civil society and social welfare organizations.