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Mail.Ru Group

Mail.Ru Group
Mail.Ru Group logo.png
Type of business Public corporation
Type of site
web portal
Available in Russian
Traded as
Founded 17/9/2016
Headquarters Moscow, Voronezh,Russian Federation
Key people Dmitry Grishin, Yuri Milner
Industry Internet information providers
Products Internet services (electronic mail, search engine, website catalogue, file hosting service, instant messaging, blogging, information, answers service)
Services Email & portal, Social networks, Instant messaging, Online games, Search & e-commerce
Revenue Increase 36.316 billion rub. (2015)
Employees 3 000
Subsidiaries Mail.ru
VK
My.com
ICQ
OK.ru
Website corp.mail.ru
Alexa rank Negative increase 31 (January 2016)
Advertising yes
Launched 15 October 1998
Current status active

Mail.Ru Group ( listed since November 5, 2010) is a Russian Internet company. It was started in 1998 as an e-mail service and went on to become a major corporate figure in the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet. As of 2013 according to comScore, websites owned by Mail.ru collectively had the largest audience in Russia and captured the most screen time. Mail.Ru's sites reach approximately 86% of Russian Internet users on a monthly basis and the company is in the top 5 of largest Internet companies, based on the number of total pages viewed. Mail.ru controls the 3 largest Russian social networking sites. It operates the second and third most popular Russian social networking sites, Odnoklassniki and Moi Mir, respectively. Mail.ru holds 100% of shares of Russia's most popular social network VKontakte and minority stakes in Qiwi, formerly OE Investments (15.04%). It also operates two instant messaging networks (Mail.Ru Agent and ICQ), an e-mail service and Internet portal Mail.ru, as well as a number of online games.

The business was originally owned by Port.ru, a company founded in 1998 by Eugene Goland, Michael Zaitsev and Alexey Krivenkov as spin-off from DataArt. It received an initial investment of USD 1 million from the well-known investor (and fencing champion) James Melcher.

The Mail.ru business expanded rapidly to reach the No. 1 market position in Russia by 2000. Attempts to fund the company's expansion in 2000-2001 were thwarted by the collapse of the technology bubble and Mail.ru had to seek merger partners.

In 2001 Yuri Milner, then managing NetBridge (the owner of less popular internet brands) persuaded the well-known entrepreneur Igor Linshits to back a merger of the Mail.ru business with NetBridge. Igor Linshits subsequently took an active role in the development of the Mail.ru business. In connection with the merger, Milner became Mail.ru CEO.


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