VK, known as Mail.ru Group until 12 October 2021, is a Russian technology company. It 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. VK operates an e-mail service, an Internet portal Mail.ru, and popular Russian

social networking A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...

platforms VK,

Odnoklassniki Odnoklassniki ( rus, Одноклассники, t=Classmates) is a social network service used mainly in Russia and former Soviet Republics. The site was developed by Albert Popkov and launched on March 4, 2006. The website currently has more ...

and Moi Mir. Additionally, VK manages various

e-commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) is the activity of electronically buying or selling of products on online services or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain manageme ...

, transport and communication platforms. It also offers business-oriented products, including a corporate email and communication system. In 2014, VK's sites reached approximately 86% of Russian Internet users on a monthly basis and the company was in the top 5 of the largest Internet companies based on the number of total pages viewed. In October 2021, Mail.ru Group was renamed VK Company Limited, after its most popular product,

VKontakte VK (short for its original name ''VKontakte''; russian: ВКонтакте, meaning ''InContact'') is a Russian online social media and social networking service based in Saint Petersburg. VK is available in multiple languages but it is predomin ...

History

The business was originally owned by Port.ru, a company founded in 1998 by Eugene Goland, Michael Zaitsev and Alexey Krivenkov as a spin-off from

DataArt ''For Data Art as an emerging art form, see Information art''DataArt is an IT consultancy company. The firm designs, develops and supports software solutions. DataArt operates from 20+ locations in the US, Europe (Armenia, Bulgaria, Germany, Georg ...

. It received an initial investment of US$1 million from the well-known investor (and fencing champion)

James Melcher James Laurence Melcher (born November 5, 1939) is an American hedge fund manager and former Olympic fencer. He competed in the individual and team épée events at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. Early and personal life Melcher grew up in P ...

. 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 Yuri Borisovich (Bentsionovich) Milner (russian: Юрий Борисович (Бенционович) Мильнер; born 11 November 1961) is a Soviet-born Israeli entrepreneur, venture capitalist and physicist. He is a cofounder and former c ...

, at the time managing NetBridge (the owner of several internet brands), persuaded the entrepreneur

Igor Linshits Igor Linshits (born 18 December 1963) is a Georgian-born, London-based entrepreneur, founder of Delin Capital, Delin Property, and Delin Ventures. Early life and education Igor Linshits was born into a family of engineers in Rustavi, Georgia. ...

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. The company began to operate as Mail.ru on 16 October 2001. Before that time its brand name was owned by Port.ru. It is headed by

Dmitry Grishin Dmitry Grishin (born 15 October 1978) is a businessman, investor and Internet entrepreneur. He is best known as the co-founder and former Chairman and CEO of Mail.ru Group. Grishin also made significant contributions to Russia’s internet presence ...

. In 2003 Milner resigned from Mail.ru and subsequently set up another internet venture, Digital Sky Technologies (DST). In 2006 Igor Linshits sold his stake in Mail.ru to Tiger Fund and Milner's DST for more than $100 million. In September 2010, DST changed its name to Mail.ru Group. Dmitry Grishin became one of the Mail.ru Group co-founders. In February 2010, Mail.ru announced the 100% acquisition of the video game developer Astrum Nival from its former owners. From that point, Astrum Nival acts under the name of Mail.ru. On September 29, 2011, the studio was renamed to

Allods Team Allods Team is a Russian video game developer and a subsidiary of Mail.Ru Games. Founded in September 2006, it was previously known as Nival Online and Astrum Nival. On February 24, 2010, Mail.Ru announced the 100% acquisition of Astrum Nival fro ...

. The studio is known for developing '' Allods Online'' and ''

Skyforge ''Skyforge'' is a free-to-play massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by Allods Team in collaboration with Obsidian Entertainment, and published by My.com. Set on the planet Aelion, Skyforge fuses elements of Science fiction ...

''. In October 2010, Mail.ru Group announced plans for an IPO via the London stock-market listing of a subsidiary – also called Mail.ru – worth more than $5bn. The IPO offered a stake of about 17% of the subsidiary. The subsidiary included about a quarter of the group's shareholding in

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

, stakes in Russia's two biggest social networking sites and Mail.ru. The company hired

Goldman Sachs Goldman Sachs () is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered at 200 West Street in Lower Manhattan, with regional headquarters in London, Warsaw, Bangalore, H ...

JP Morgan JPMorgan Chase & Co. is an American multinational investment bank and financial services holding company headquartered in New York City and incorporated in Delaware. As of 2022, JPMorgan Chase is the largest bank in the United States, the wo ...

Morgan Stanley Morgan Stanley is an American multinational investment management and financial services company headquartered at 1585 Broadway in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. With offices in more than 41 countries and more than 75,000 employees, the fir ...

and

VTB Capital VTB Capital (russian: ВТБ Капитал) is a Russian investment bank. It is one of the three strategic business arms of VTB Group, along with the corporate and retail businesses. VTB Capital has been ranked among the top investment banks in ...

to run the listing. After the public offering, the global operations of Mail.ru Group continued as the privately held company

DST Global DST Global is a venture capital and private equity firm that primarily invests in late-stage internet companies. DST Global has been described as one of the largest and most influential venture firms in the world, with an estimated $50 billion in ...

. Major shareholders at the time included

Alisher Usmanov Alisher Burkhanovich Usmanov (russian: Алишер Бурханович Усманов; born 9 September 1953) is an Uzbek-born Russian businessman and oligarch. By 2022, Usmanov had an estimated net worth of $19.5 billion and was among the ...

, Mail.ru Group's corporate sibling

Tencent Holdings Tencent Holdings Ltd. () is a Chinese multinational technology and entertainment conglomerate and holding company headquartered in Shenzhen. It is one of the highest grossing multimedia companies in the world based on revenue. It is also the w ...

, Tencent's largest shareholder

Prosus Prosus N.V., or Prosus, is a global investment group that is investing and operating across sectors and markets with long-term growth potential. It is among the largest technology investors in the world. Prosus has invested across multiple verti ...

, and

Tiger Management Tiger Management Corp., also known as "The Tiger Fund", is an American hedge fund and family office founded by Julian Robertson. The fund began investing in 1980 and closed in March 2000/01. It continues to operate today in direct public equity ...

. In March 2012,

stepped down from the role of Chairman of Mail.ru and from the board of directors. Dmitry Grishin was elected to the board of directors and appointed as chairman of the Board while retaining his CEO position. There were no other changes to management or to the Board. On May 11, 2022, Dmitry Grishin stepped down as chairman of the board of directors and non-executive director of the company In November 2012, it was reported that Mail.ru would discontinue using Google search services.Mail.Ru откажется от поисковых услуг Google
// Vesti.ru Full migration to the use of Mail.ru's own engine occurred in the summer of 2013.Jennifer Slegg: Russia's Mail.Ru Drops Google Search, Launches Own Search Engine
// searchenginewatch.com, 3 July 2013 In late 2012, Mail.ru Group's plans for buying two-letter domain

My.com My.com is an international subsidiary of VK that offers Internet-related services and products. My.com is working under brands and services myMail, myChat and Maps.Me. My.com is headquartered in Amsterdam, Netherlands, with a U.S. office locat ...

became known. This was interpreted as an intention of dominating world markets and of the upcoming re-branding of services under this name.Mail.ru пойдет за рубеж с новым именем
// dp.ru, 30 October 2012 At the end of 2012, Mail.ru Group bought the Ukrainian email service mail.ua and the registration of email addresses using this domain started on 23 April 2013. On 3 October 2016, Mail.ru announced that they had acquired 100% of the game developer

Pixonic Pixonic is a video game developer and publisher based in Limassol, Cyprus. Following the company's establishment in 2009, its initial focus was on developing and publishing social network games. In 2013, Pixonic concentrated its efforts on the m ...

's shares. In January 2018, Mail.ru acquired ESForce, a holding company that owns a number of different esports businesses, including both

Virtus.pro Virtus.pro (VP) is an international esports organization founded in 2003 in Russia and acquired by Armenian investors in 2022. The organization has players competing in such games as '' Counter-Strike: Global Offensive'', '' Dota 2'', ''Rainbow ...

and

SK Gaming SK Gaming is a professional esports organization based in Germany that has teams across the world competing in different titles. SK is particularly known for their success in ''Counter-Strike'' (CS) tournaments. SK's Brazilian ''CS'' team won ...

, for US$150 million. In September 2018,

Alibaba Ali Baba (character), Ali Baba is a character from the folk tale ''Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves''. Ali Baba or Alibaba may also refer to: Films * Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1902 film), ''Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves'' (1902 film), a F ...

announced buying a 10% stake in Mail.ru, which would have a value of $484 million based on Mail.ru's market capitalization on 10 September 2018. In July 2019, Tencent-backed iDreamSky Technology Holdings and Mail.ru Group announced an alliance in the gaming sector in China and Europe. In December 2019, Mail.ru Group formed a partnership with

Sberbank PJSC Sberbank (russian: Сбербанк, initially a contraction of russian: сберегательный банк, translit=sberegatelnyy bank, lit=savings bank, link=no) is a Russian majority state-owned banking and financial services compan ...

to develop the food and transportation service O2O. In 2020, the state

Russian Direct Investment Fund The Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) is Russia's sovereign wealth fund established in 2011 by the Russian government to make investments in companies of high-growth sectors of the Russian economy. Its mandate is to co-invest alongside the wo ...

, China's Tencent, Naspers, and others bought $600 million of GDRs and bonds from Mail.ru. The funds were raised for the development of O2O and AliExpress Russia. In October 2021,

Sberbank of Russia PJSC Sberbank (russian: Сбербанк, initially a contraction of russian: сберегательный банк, translit=sberegatelnyy bank, lit=savings bank, link=no) is a Russian majority state-owned banking and financial services compan ...

and "Mail.ru Group" invested 6,1 billion roubles each O2O food and transportation service, the total of their investments in equal shares now touching about 43 billion roubles in 2021. On the whole, shares of both investors didn't change from 45,01% each. In November 2021,

signed binding papers for selling its 36% of shares of "MF Tekhnologii" (controlling entity of VK company) to

Gazprombank Gazprombank (russian: Газпромбанк), or GPB (JSC), is a private-owned Russian bank, the third largest bank in the country by assets. Since November 2014, Yuri Shamalov's Gazfond is its largest shareholder. The bank’s principal busine ...

for 12,8 billion of roubles by the end of the year 2021. In December 2021,

Sogaz SOGAZ is a Russian insurance company. SOGAZ became the first in Russia by written premium (₽142.8 billion or US$2.3 billion) and market share (12.1%) in 2016. The company was formed in 1993 and has direct business in Russia and Serbia. Insurance ...

Group bought all USM's (owned by

and his partners) indirect stake in "MF Tekhnologii" (controlling 57,3% of VK company). On September 26, 2022, the VKontakte social networking app was removed from Apple's App Store, along with VK's Mail.ru, Mail.ru Cloud, VK Music, and VK Clips.

Statistics

* In 2005 there were more than 30 million users with 25 million emails a day. * By the end of 2006 it was announced that a strategic agreement with

Yandex Yandex LLC (russian: link=no, Яндекс, p=ˈjandəks) is a Russian multinational technology company providing Internet-related products and services, including an Internet search engine, information services, e-commerce, transportation, maps ...

was achieved about the use of a

search engine A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...

instead of Google. This has been reversed in January 2010. This collaboration was dropped in November 2012, with migration to its own engine, which ended in mid-2013. * In January 2007 30% shares of Mail.ru were bought by

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

n company

Naspers Naspers Limited is a South African multinational internet, technology and multimedia holding company headquartered in Cape Town, with interests in online retail, publishing and venture capital investment. Naspers' principal shareholder is its ...

for $165 million, and by 2019, the Naspers spin-off

had 28% of Mail.ru.

Services

VK Group offers a variety of online communication products and entertainment services for Russian speakers all over the world, such as: * Email & portal – Mail.ru E-mail, Main portal, content projects * Social networks – VK, OK.ru, My World * Instant messaging – Agent, ICQ * Online Games via a newly founded brand called

My.Games My.Games (styled as MY.GAMES) is a European publisher and developer headquartered in Amsterdam. Some of the company's notable titles include War Robots, Rush Royale 31, Rush Royale, Hustle Castle, Left to Survive, Zero City, Warface GO and Tactico ...

– MMO games, Social games, Mobile games * Search & e-commerce – Search, Headhunter, Price comparison *

– integrated communication and entertainment platform. * Cloud – cloud storage similar to

Dropbox Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by the American company Dropbox, Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, California, U.S. that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, personal cloud, and Client (computing), client software. Dropb ...

, apps available for PC and smartphones *

– private equity and venture capital investments * – voice virtual assistant app for smartphones * –

smart speaker A smart speaker is a type of loudspeaker and voice command device with an integrated virtual assistant that offers interactive actions and hands-free activation with the help of one "hot word" (or several "hot words"). Some smart speakers can al ...

* – stream

monetizing Monetization ( also spelled monetisation) is, broadly speaking, the process of converting something into money. The term has a broad range of uses. In banking, the term refers to the process of converting or establishing something into legal tend ...

service

Controversies

On 15 May 2017, The Ukrainian President

Petro Poroshenko Petro Oleksiyovych Poroshenko ( uk, Петро́ Олексі́йович Пороше́нко, ; born 26 September 1965) is a Ukrainian businessman and politician who served as the fifth president of Ukraine from 2014 to 2019. Poroshenko ser ...

signed a decree to impose a ban on Mail.ru and its popular social networking services including

and

as part of Ukraine's continued sanctions on Russia for its annexation of Crimea and involvement in the

War in Donbas War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...

. The move was widely criticised as censorship, and

Reporters Without Borders Reporters Without Borders (RWB; french: Reporters sans frontières; RSF) is an international non-profit and non-governmental organization with the stated aim of safeguarding the right to freedom of information. It describes its advocacy as found ...

condemned the ban, calling it a "disproportionate measure that seriously undermines the Ukrainian people's right to information and freedom of expression."Ukraine's Poroshenko to block Russian social networks

BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broadca ...

(16 May 2017) Mail.ru itself estimated (in August 2017) that the ban had cost them around 1.5% of total revenues in 2017. On 5 November 2017, the

Paradise Papers The Paradise Papers are a set of over 13.4 million confidential electronic documents relating to offshore investments that were leaked to the German reporters Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer, from the newspaper'' Süddeutsch ...

, a set of confidential

electronic document An electronic document is any electronic media content (other than computer programs or system files) that is intended to be used in either an electronic form or as printed output. Originally, any computer data were considered as something inter ...

s relating to

offshore investment Offshore investment is the keeping of money in a jurisdiction other than one's country of residence. Offshore jurisdictions are used to pay less tax in many countries by large and small-scale investors. Poorly regulated offshore domiciles have ser ...

, revealed that Russian state organizations with ties to

Vladimir Putin Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who holds the office of president of Russia. Putin has served continuously as president or prime minister since 1999: as prime min ...

pursued between 2009 and 2011 large investments in

and

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

via an intermediary—Russian-American billionaire and entrepreneur

, founder of Mail.ru and DST Global, who had befriended Facebook founder

Mark Zuckerberg Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (; born ) is an American business magnate, internet entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is known for co-founding the social media website Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook, Inc.), o ...

Kremlin-owned Firms Linked to Major Investments in Twitter and Facebook
. ''International Consortium of Investigative Journalists – ICIJ.'' 5 November 2017. and was a business associate of

Jared Kushner Jared Corey Kushner (born January 10, 1981) is an American businessman and investor. He served as a senior advisor to 45th U.S. president Donald Trump, his father-in-law. Since leaving the White House, Kushner founded Affinity Partners, a pri ...

, President

Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pe ...

's son-in-law.

References

External links

* {{Authority control Webmail Internet technology companies of Russia Russian brands Web portals Internet search engines Internet censorship in Ukraine Companies listed on the London Stock Exchange Internet properties established in 1998 1998 establishments in Russia 2010 initial public offerings Companies based in Moscow Yuri Milner