Mail.ru will has signed a deal to broadcast the Soyuz space shuttle launch through their new online video service, video.mail.ru. On 7 April at 21.00 Moscow time a live audience of millions of television viewers and Internet users can watch …

The 2nd Internet and Business conference will take place in Moscow on the 18th-20th of April. Some of the topics set to be covered include: Exponential growth of internet in Russia
Contextual advertising/pay for placement systems and future developments
Electronic payments, problems and …

Google is celebrating their first anniversary in Russia at the moment and according to 3dnews.ru, they are marking the occasion by opening a new office in Moscow. In 2006, Google set up two development centers in Moscow and St. Petersburg. …

Yandex, the leading Russian search portal, has released a new report on the state of e-commerce in Russia. The results are promising, up 42% in 2006, racing ahead of the 25% rise seen in western markets. As expected, Moscow leads …

Yandex announced today that they have acquired the popular networking sites for professionals, MoiKrug.ru. The social network site MoiKrug.ru which translates as ‘my circle’ in English, helps to maintain and build business contacts, find classmates, peers and colleagues. In a similar …

Russian search company Rambler has announced the appointment of former Yahoo! Europe chief, Mark Opzoomer, as General Director (CEO). This move is seen by many analysts as a positive step for the search company. While Rambler were the first search engine …

Plans by ICANN to delete some of the more ‘outdated’ domain extensions in their index have been derailed. They had opened a public discussion in San Paulo which ended last month. Top of their list of their list for deletion was the Russian .su (Soviet Union) extension and the former Yogoslav Republic’s .yu. However the public proceedings have been dogged by protests and threats of legal action from domain owners, less than happy at the prospect of loosing their domain, marketing and branding expenses. ICANN finally agreed to leave the extensions alone.

Yandex, the leading Russian search engine, have announced their preliminary financial results for 2006. Revenue is reported to total $72m (USD), more than double that reported for 2005.

“Our internal research indicates that 2006 was the first year that search/context …

Europe’s largest telecoms operators - with one American firm - are planning to launch a mobile phone search engine to rival Google and Yahoo. The companies concerned include Vodafone, France Telecom, Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom, Hutchison Whampoa, Telecom Italia and US firm Cingular. Combined, they have a user base of 600 million people - with some 20% in the UK expected to have broadband speed mobile phone access by the end of 2007.

Sergey Brin, one of the founders of Google, was born in Moscow in 1973, and the first words out of his mouth were Russian. Yet neither Russian nor the Russian market has come easily to Google.

The NY Times is carrying an article on Google’s lack of progress in Russia to date. Like the Chinese market, this is area which is dominated by the local players.

“Google promised they would destroy everything, but look at where …

A recent Hotwire Ipsos MORI survey, identifies blogs as one mos the most influential information sources, second only to newspapers.

The study reveals that 34% declare they have not purchased a product after reading comments on the internet from customers or …

Rambler [LSE: RMG] has changed ownership this week in a rather dramatic share buy out. Having just sold their TV business ‘Rambler TV’ to Osgora Productions Ltd, a 100% subsidiary of Prof-Media, for US$23m it seems that Prof-Media has come …

Rambler [LSE: RMG] has decided to sell their TV business ‘Rambler TV’ to Osgora Productions Ltd, a 100 pct subsidiary of Prof-Media, a Russian media holding company for US$23.

According to their press release this will allow them to “concentrate on …

A new poll by the National Public Opinion centre has concluded that 25% of Russians now use the internet. This is a significant increase on the 19% figure taken 6 months ago.

1/5th of internet users visit forums, watch films …

This week President Putin introduced a new bill to clamp down on the gambling industry in Russia. The new bill entitled “About the State Regulation of Activities on Gambling” in currently in the project stage and has yet to be …

The race is on to see which engine will deliver a contextual advertising program for ordinary webmasters in Russia to rival Google.

Well it was only this Tuesday when I wrote that, and it seems that race has started in ernest …

Rambler, the No.2 search engine in Russia with a 20% share in the market, have released their financial statement for the 1st half of 2006 [LSE: RMG]

Report Highlights:
Total revenue up nearly 100% period on period to US$ 16 million (US$ …

Yandex, Russia’s leading search engine, has reduced the minimum cost per click from $0.10c to 0.01c (30 kopecks) in their contextual advertising program. This should allow users to start using Yandex more effectively for the PPC long tail, as they …

The Boston Consulting Group has released a report showing that the personal financial wealth of Russians will grow faster than anywhere else on the planet, save India.

Buoyed by a flood of cash from oil and gas exports, the value …

Yandex opened a new office in St. Petersburg today, expanding out of their Moscow base. Andrey Ivanov, who previously led the Russian branch of the Borland company, will be head of the operation.

In the first months the tasks of the …

Times have got harder for the online gambling industry in Russia as Rambler, the No.2 search engine has decided to stop accepting PPC advertising for the gambling/poker sector. Earlier this year I reported on the new law introduced to restrict …

A recent study provides information on the development of social networks and their impact on Internt traffic distribution worldwide …

Today is the 5th Birthday of Yandex Direct, the leading contexual advertising system in Russia (think Adwords). The service was born on 31st July 2001 and powers both the Yandex search engine as well as several other leading Runet sites. …

The Russian search engine Yandex is partnering with the BBC to collect questions for a special interactive session with President Putin to be held on the 6th July 2006 at 1400BST.

“We understand that the number of question will greatly …

We don’t often think of the Eurovision Song Contest having an effect on the world of international search but anyone who has watched the event will admit that the voting is notoriously political. It seemed no coincidence that the UK …

Rambler, the No.2 search engine in Russia with a 20% share in the market, have released their financial statement for 2005. As expected they have seen significant growth, as with most industry sectors in Russia the online advertising market has …

Google signed its first accord with VimpelCom, a Russian mobile phone company today, making the search engine available to users on their handsets.

“This partnership is very exciting. We are making more of a commitment to Russia,” Dennis Woodside, Google’s director …

Information week is carrying the news that Nortel and Golden Telecom, a large Russian Internet service provider, are teaming up to build a large Wi-Fi mesh network in Moscow.

The companies said that the network will provide access to about …

As anyone who studies the Russian internet market knows, internet access is a key problem. While ADSL/SDSL high speed connections overtook dial-up for the first time this March this growth primarily reflects the situation in the large cities, such as …

Threadwatch and ThomasB report that Google has extended the GoogleMaps application to cover many more countries in Europe. Then have even followed route E30 all the way to Moscow!

As Thomas writes, the implications for local search are significant. With multilingual …

Nigma.ru, the Russian search engine run and supported by Moscow State University, has announced a partnership with Softmart.ru, a leading hardware provider in the country. The main result of this deal is the provision of 100 new high performance …

Last weekend saw the launch of the first Internet and Business conference to be held in Russia. It was a prestigious event and most of the companies and individuals shaping the new Runet were in appearance. With the current surge …

Yandex, the Russian mega-portal, have released a new auto-focus tool for their PPC system, Yandex Direct. This will give marketers the ability to let the system select similar keyword terms for their adverts.

As you might expect the auto-focus is …

Nigma.ru have released a press release today to mark their 1st birthday, which was officially on 12th April. The Nigma.ru metasearch engine was developed as a project by the students and graduate students at the psychology faculty of Moscow State …

Bigmir.net, the Ukrainian internet statistics site in partnership with Sputnik Media has released their metrics report for March 2006.

During March, the Ukrainian internet audience grew 10% (274′000 new users). Bigmir.net estimates that there are nearly 3 million (2,913,193) internet users …

Mail.ru, the popular Russian mailbox provider, has announced the launch of their new WAP mobile search service today.

This beta service will allow mobile users to retrieve information on Runet WAP sites and to use Mail.ru’s own search engine (WAP-search).

Their search …

Ordered by a US governmental institution, the Kiev International Sociological Institute conducted an opinion poll of 2,021 Ukrainians by the end of 2005, the results of which were published by the REGNUM News Agency today.

According to the research, despite the …

The second annual conference “Audience Control and Advertising in the Internet” has just come to a close in Moscow. More then 300 people from different regions of Russia came to the capital to discuss internet advertising perspectives, 2 times more …

The Pew Global Attitudes Project has released a report illustrating the rapid growth of internet use globally. Much of this growth can be put down to more women and over 50’s coming online across Western Europe.

The report also contains …

Ru-Centre, the Russian Registrar, has released this Monday on the number of domains in circulation. According to their figures 140 000 new URLs appeared last year in the Russian internet, which is 46.31% more than in 2004. In the beginning …

An panel of lawyers concluded on Thursday that Russian notaries are not ready to certify Web resources for use as evidence in court cases. This has implications for company protection against copyright, branding and other intellectual property cases involving the …

The Moscow Times is carrying a report on the recent surge in London IPO listings for Russian companies.

Seven Russian IPOs raised $5 billion on the London Stock Exchange in 2005, making Russia the biggest source of international primary offerings …

Offline gambling has exploded in Russia in the last three years, particularly in Moscow. It is an estimated $5 billion annual business and draws players to both high-class casinos and the one-rouble slots in small arcades. Russia, the world’s second-largest …

Yandex, Russia’s most popular search engine portal, have announced record profits for last year. Net profit of the company in 2005 was $13,6m, and turnover (revenue) was $35,6m (on US GAAP, without including NDS). Those figures have doubled since 2004. …

The conference season in Russia has taken a great leap forward today with the announcement of a new summit targeted at RuNet e-commerce. The conference has been organised by the leading lights of Russian internet – including the search engines …

With ADSL lines increasing to 8MB in the US and Europe it is easy to forget that many Russian users still access the internet using a dial up connection. However research carried out this month by the ROMIR group has …

ROMIR, the independent research group has released their periodical results for internet usage, which show that at the end of 2005, RuNet users share made up 17% of the whole adult population of Russia. While this was a disappointing dip …

For those looking beyond the usual conference schedule this year, the RUSSOFT summit held in Moscow from May 31st to June 2nd offers a chance to meet Russian outsourcing companies first hand. The summit was started to promote Russia’s programming …

The telecommunications and information technology industry will grow to exceed $40 billion a year by 2010, IT and Communications Minister Leonid Reiman said on Monday at a news conference held in Moscow.

The total market was reported to have reached about …