BIGLOBE was originally a search portal site of NEC, a Japanese multinational information technology company, created in July 1996 and later spun off from NEC in 2006. The site mainly provides news, music, study, life, work and other information. Its site name BIGLOBE is a combination of "BIG" and "GLOBE".

Rakuten Station (Infoseek) is one of the most popular search engine portals in Japan, created in 1997, mainly providing search, mailbox, shopping, maps, news, dictionaries, finance and other online services.