1999–2000: Establishment and launch of services[edit]

Naver Corporation was first established in June 1999 under the name of Naver Comm. Along with its search engine Naver, the company also launched a service for children named Junior Naver. In July 2000, Naver merged with Hangame Communications Inc. and several other companies including Oneque and Search Solutions.

In August 2000, Naver began its ‘comprehensive search’ service, which allows users to get a variety of results from a search query on a single page, organized by type (for example blogs, webpages, images, cafes, etc.). In September 2000, Naver established Hangame Japan.

2001–2012: Renaming and worldwide expansion[edit]

In 2001, NAVER Comm was renamed NHN Corporation (Next Human Network), although both divisions—Naver and Hangame—continued to operate under their original brand names. NHN also stood for (NAVER, Hangame, Network).

In 2002, NHN was registered on the KOSDAQ stock exchange, and launched the online Q&A service Naver Knowledge iN. In 2003, NHN merged all Japanese subsidiaries into NHN Japan. In 2005, Naver began the online donation service: Happy Bean. It also established its US branch under the name NHN USA. In 2007, it launched Naver Japan in order to pursue its search engine business in Japan. Meanwhile, NHN USA officially opened its American game service, ijji. However, it later sold away its 100% stake to Aeria Games.

In 2008, NHN appeared on the Forbes Global 2000 list for the first time. That same year, NHN had the largest market capitalization among KOSDAQ-listed companies before being transferred to the KOSPI market in November. In 2009, Kim Sang-Hun of NHN and Jing-Wan Kim of Samsung were the only South Korean CEOs to appear on Forbes‘ Asia’s Fab 50 list.

In 2010 NHN bought Livedoor, a Japanese ISP and blog platform. In the same year, the company moved into its new headquarters now known as the Green Factory.

In June 2011, NHN Japan launched Line, a messaging application that quickly soared in usage. In 2012, NHN announced that it planned to invest ₩1.5 billion (equivalent to ₩1.59 billion or US$1.41 million in 2017)

 in dveloping ten social media games. In the same year, NHN Japan, Naver Japan and Livedoor were all merged into one company: NHN Japan. In August, NHN also established its Singapore branch NHN Singapore.^{[citation needed]}

2013–2015: Splitting from NHN[edit]

In 2013, NHN launched its subsidiary companies Camp Mobile and Line Plus. NHN was split into Naver Corporation and NHN Entertainment, the latter being formerly known as Hangame. Similarly, NHN Japan separated into Line Corporation (web services) and Hangame Japan (game services). In June, Naver became the first web company in Korea to build and operate its own data center, Data Center GAK, which was built in Chuncheon, Gangwon Province. In 2015, Naver launched Works Mobile for B2B collaboration businesses and merged with Entry Education Labs, which is a software education platform company. In the same year, global revenues began exceeding ₩1 trillion (equivalent to ₩1.03 trillion or US$910.54 million in 2017) due to the growth of global affiliate services such as LINE.

2016–2020: Listing and further expansion[edit]

Naver’s annual revenue for 2016 was 4.02 trillion won. In 2016, Line Corporation was double listed on both the NYSE and the TSE. In August 2016, Naver spun off its app SNOW into a separate subsidiary company, Snow Corp. Naver also began Project Flower, a project which aims to support small businesses and creators by cooperating with them on various projects. In September 2016, Naver and its affiliate Line announced that they would invest a combined 100 million euros (US$112 million) into K-Fund 1. K-Fund 1 is a European startup accelerator fund operated by Korelya Capital, which is an investment firm established by Fleur Pellerin, the Korean-born former French minister overseeing small and medium enterprises in the digital economy.In 2017, Naver established its subsidiary companies Snow, Naver Labs, and Naver Webtoon. Naver opened Space Green, which is a startup space inside Station F, a startup incubator space located in France. Naver also acquired Xerox Research Centre Europe, located in the French city Grenoble, rebranding it as Naver Labs Europe.

2021–present: Global expansion[edit]

In mid-January 2021, Naver announced the acquisition of Wattpad for US$600 million.

In March 2021 Line Corporation merged with Yahoo Japan, which has been operated by Z Holdings, a SoftBank Group subsidiary. Under the new structure, Naver and SoftBank Corp., which is the wireless carrier unit of SoftBank Group, each hold 50 percent stakes in a new company named A Holdings Corp., which holds a majority stake in Z Holdings, which will operate Line and Yahoo Japan. Upon integrating the two businesses and creating further platforms, the merged company aims to compete with the U.S. tech giants Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple and the Chinese tech giants Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent, as well as the Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten. The merger also gives Z Holdings three additional Asian markets where Line is popular: Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

In May 2021, Naver partnered with CJ Group’s CJ ENM to acquire Munpia Inc, the third largest web-novel platform in Korea.

In October 2022, Naver agreed to buy social commerce marketplace Poshmark for a total enterprise value of US$1.2 billion, which finalized in January 2023.