Nigma.ru, a little known but innovative Russian search engine, could make a Vietnamese version of its service available as soon as April 1 under the domain name Itim.vn, meaning “I seek” in Vietnamese.
The news was announced to Russian business daily Kommersant by Mikhail Frolkin, a prominent Internet entrepreneur who recently acquired a minority stake in the search engine from Mail.ru Group (formerly DST).
“Although Internet traffic in Vietnam has reached a significant volume, content and services are just as underdeveloped as they were in Russia ten years ago,” said Frolkin. “Google’s market share has reached 70%, but its search results are unsatisfactory due to language specificities.”
Nigma defines itself as an “intellectual search system”. It claims it can manage search requests using ‘natural language’ algorithms. It also offers a range of advanced features such as mathematical and chemistry problem solving, table-formatted search results and a question and answer service.
Although Nigma is visited by over three million users monthly, the site remains a minor player on the Russian search engine market, notes Kommersant. LiveInternet.ru estimated its market share at just 0.3% in February 2011, far behind Yandex (65.1%) and Google (21.4%).
Nigma.ru was founded in 2005 by students and graduates of the mathematics and cybernetics faculty of Moscow’s State University (MGU). The site also mentions a partnership with Stanford university.
