Masterhost co-owning Webplanet?

"... after a while the entire project will be sold for a tidy sum -" Web planet "is now in very good condition, sell offers are already coming in," - shared his optimism Lech Andreev in an interview with a balcony 20 August.

Indeed, there was information that already in August one of the co-owners of Webplanet bought a share in the publication for Masterhost for an amount of five zeros (Vladislav Kochetkov from Finam suggests that the transaction value was at least 300-350 thousand dollars). The repurchased share is slightly less than 50%

Masterhost already has its own publication Hostinfo.ru (an informational and analytical daily content publication dedicated to various issues related to hosting, colocation, provider and other topics that are of interest to Internet users). His editor-in-chief, as well as Lekha Andreev, is a well-known personality on the Runet - Alex Exler.

Thus, one of the leaders of the Russian hosting, which does not deal with the media business, already has two online IT-related publications, and not the last ones on the market. An impressive media arsenal of means of shaping public opinion is likely to go to war with RBC. The latter in the middle of August immediately acquired five hosting providers, thus chopping off about 20% of the Runet hosting market. The ex-leader Masterhost fell in second place with 13%, in third place with a significant margin is ValueHost (5%).

Masterhost became preoccupied with the struggle for a place in the sun before these events, by purchasing the SpyLog statistics system, which most analysts unanimously commented on as a step to expand the range of services and attract and retain customers in a highly competitive market with the help of an improved service. About a week before, Masterhost entered the Activist holding, co-founded by Leonid Filatov.
Recently, the VTB-Venture State Investment Fund has become a co-investor of Activist. Thus, Masterhost becomes a participant in the big game for the money of environmental funds spending on IT development. The presence of a loyal publication with a significant audience and a solid reputation is almost a prerequisite for successful participation in it.
Especially in light of competition with RBC. The RBC Information Systems holding includes electronic media (RBC daily, Ytro.Ru), print media (daily RBC daily, RBC magazine), Internet resources (RBC-Ukraine, RBC-Credit, RBC-Real Estate »), The RBC-TV channel and a number of other media assets.

However, buying Web Planets is just the first step. It is still unclear what system the existing media assets will be built into, what distribution of functions will happen between publications, and the most interesting is which of the two star-headed editorial offices will become the “chief editor”. Apparently, the web planet will have to adjust its editorial policy by eliminating the positive towards RBC and the negative towards Masterhost (both can be found among the latest materials without difficulty, for now).

The chief editor of Webplanet Alexey Andreev called the information about the deal “rumors”, but the affirmative answer to the question “is this all wrong?” did not give.

Source . There you can read a not very convincing comment by Lehi Andreev.