Rostelecom will launch a state Internet search engine

Rostelecom is developing a new search engine Sputnik, which can be launched as early as 2014.

As the interlocutor in Rostelecom told Vedomosti, the search engine, which will be located at sputnik.ru, will begin work in the first quarter of 2014. He noted that the project has existed for about three years, and its active development has been ongoing for the last one and a half to two years, during which the company invested $ 20 million in it.

According to the publication, the new search engine will be promoted "at the state level"and installed by default in government bodies and state-owned companies. At the same time, the interlocutor of the publication in Rostelecom said that the search engine will not provide for filtering content that is objectionable to the state, and market methods will be used to promote it among users. The system is developed by KM Media, acquired by Rostelecom in 2012 (click on Roem.ru for interesting comments, read).

Sources of the publication in Yandex and Mail.ru Group said that Rostelecom is currently conducting interviews with developers at these companies.

The fact that the Russian authorities hatched the idea of ​​creating a national search engine, more than the existing search engines, focused on state needs, the media first wrote back in the spring of 2010. Then it was alleged that the initiator of the project was Vladislav Surkov, who served as deputy head of the presidential administration.

The idea of ​​creating a “state search engine” appeared in 2008 in the administration of the then president Dmitry Medvedev. This happened after the war in Georgia, State Duma deputy Ilya Ponomarev told Vedomosti. The information in the news sections of search engines did not always correspond to the official one and at the same time had a great resonance. Then it became clear that the search engine can serve as a powerful media resource and be used as an aggregator of news necessary for the state. In the same year, businessman Alisher Usmanov wanted to acquire a stake in Yandex, the largest Russian search engine with a share of over 60% in RuNet.

So far, sputnik.ru has been greeting visitors with an authorization form. A good result for two years of development and a budget of $ 20 million.

What do you think about this?

A source:tape.ru , statements