Every once in a while, we need a good excuse to get our CEO and cofounders to put on a sport coat. They did so yesterday in honor of the Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Hsien Loong, who visited our Sunnyvale campus. Over the past week, PM Lee has been on a tour of the U.S. that has included visits with President George Bush and presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. He’s now making his way home with a stop in Silicon Valley, and Yahoo! is the only Internet company on his itinerary.

It’s an important visit for me — as head of Emerging Markets, I spend a lot of time in Singapore (and am moving there later this month). Singapore is a critical gateway to countries like Vietnam and the Philippines, where Internet adoption is accelerating, and where Yahoo! has a strong and growing presence. It’s also the second-fastest growing economy in Southeast Asia after Vietnam.

While many Internet and social media companies are rushing to Singapore, Yahoo! has actually been there for 10 years. We worked early on with the Singaporean government to grow the Internet industry there through investment in training and infrastructure, understanding the unique needs of the market and developing locally relevant products. So, we were happy to host the prime minister today and continue this partnership.

Prior to the traditional gift exchange, Terry, Jerry, and I sat down with PM Lee to talk about three things: innovation in online and mobile technologies, education, and the evolving digital media industry in Singapore. Education is a top priority for the prime minister, as he sees its potential to drive his country’s continued development. And an increase in usage of online and mobile services naturally follows that development. In fact, emerging markets such as Indonesia and India are expected to make up 90% of new mobile subscribers this year. Mobile communications is part of daily life in Singapore and Yahoo! has been developing some cool search and Internet tools such as oneSearch and Yahoo! Go, which we’ll be bringing to Southeast Asia soon.

On a tour of the campus, we gave PM Lee a demo of many of these tools, including the new Web-based Yahoo! Instant Messenger that we released last week. Products like these are designed for users in developing markets like Vietnam, where not everyone owns a PC but they still have access to the Internet. Many people there have to share a PC at home or work, or rely on their local Internet café. The prime minister truly enjoyed his visit to Yahoo! as he was very interested in learning about new technologies and taking this Silicon Valley perspective back to his country.

After more technology demos and a stop at the Network Operations Center, the PM’s motorcade rolled off to its next destination and I went back to my plans for the emerging markets, even more energized. It was a great day and a great honor to have a head of state visiting Yahoo!.

I’d better start packing for my big move — look for future posts on the cool things we’ll be doing in Southeast Asia and India.

Keith Nilsson
Vice President of International Emerging Markets

Photo from Maximum Mitch