Arkady Volozh, the other founder of Yandex, announced the sad news on the official company blog on July 28. “The changes in the blood were no longer compatible with life. He had to be given a chance to leave with dignity. The doctors turned him off yesterday, his heart stopped,” Volozh wrote. Early reports indicated …
Yandex co-founder Ilya Segalovich dies at 48 in London Read More
A few months after the merger of Avito,ru, Olx.ru, and Slando.ru, which have formed Russia’s leading online classifieds company, market consolidation continues with Media3’s acquisition of Cian.ru. A major Russian media publishing, commercial printing, and distribution group, Media3 plans to merge Cian.ru and Dmir.ru, a sizable classifieds group with seven thematic platforms – including real …
Media3 acquires realty classifieds site Cian.ru with leadership ambitions Read More
A prominent Russian legislator has censured Google for shifting its Russian tax burden to local contractors – just weeks after Google and other US Internet companies were accused of avoiding taxes in countries like France, Italy, and the UK. Ruslan Gattarov, a senator heading the committee for information policy of the Council of the Federation …
This past Monday, LSE-listed Russian Internet company Mail.Ru Group announced that all user queries on its Search Mail.Ru service will be handled by its proprietary search engine. Previously, more than half of the queries – mostly international ones – were serviced by Google. The actual development of the company’s search engine began as early as …
Mail.Ru stops cooperation with Google, switches over fully to proprietary search engine Read More
Leading Russian Internet company Mail.Ru Group announced last week that an adapted version of the homepage of its webmail service Mail.ru will be used by default in smart TVs manufactured by LG. At the revamped Mail.Ru homepage, smart TV users will be able to check the program schedule and their Mail.Ru email accounts, search the web, …
LG Smart TVs to use Mail.Ru as the default homepage Read More
Last week the Russian parliament passed a new law against movie piracy on the Internet, which will take effect on August 1, 2013 if signed by the President. The new regulation allows copyright holders to file lawsuits against websites violating their intellectual property. The court will issue a warrant to block the website if the violating …
New anti-piracy law for video content shocks the industry Read More
Earlier this month, Russian search giant Yandex announced the launch of new, interactive search snippets called “Islands.” In contrast to previous launches of new features, this time the company decided not to try launching in its home market — Russia and Russian-speaking countries of the former Soviet Union — but to instead roll it out …
Yandex tests new search features on its Turkish version Read More
Apple’s operating systems iOS 7 for mobile and Mac OS X Mavericks for laptops and desktops, which were introduced to developers last week, allow users from Russia, some other countries of the former Soviet Union, and Turkey, to choose Yandex as the default search engine. The news was confirmed by the Russian company’s International Media …
Yandex search appears in newest versions of iOS and Mac OS X Read More
In what may seem like a commonplace feature in many countries but represents a pioneering move in Russia, leading dating service Mamba has introduced an Amazon-like one-click payment method, making the recurring use of its service easier. Once a user’s bank card is registered for a first-time payment, subsequent payments are pre-authorized based on information …
Online dating service Mamba introduces one-click payments Read More
Earlier this month, Russian search giant Yandex announced that it has provided a €150,000 grant to Wikidata, a non-profit organization that is developing a knowledge database with structured information obtained from Wikipedia articles. Launched in October 2012 by Wikimedia Deutschland, Wikidata is creating a huge database about different objects, people, things, and phenomena, and how …
The Russian government has named pharmaceutical and biomedical as priority sectors for innovation, and has set a fairly ambitious strategic goal of increasing the share of domestic medical equipment products in the Russian market to at least 40%. In these highly important fields, two new players have emerged recently in Russia, assisted by the global …
Russian innovators offer solutions for mobile medicine; Cisco backs hi-tech endeavors Read More
Last week, the Microsoft Russia Seed Fund announced it has disbursed another $160,000 to support Russian startups developing IT projects. A $60,000 grant went to Appercode from Siberia’s Novosibirsk. The Appercode team pushes a solution that would enable application developers and systems integrators to create .NET/C#-based cross-platform mobile apps. The product is believed to reduce …
Microsoft Seed Fund backs app development and genetic diagnostics Read More
