History of the Russian Internet.
History is something far away that is studied by contemporaries from books in dusty classrooms of educational institutions. All the more unusual is the history of the formation of “our” segment of “the network of all networks” - it developed before our very eyes. Who doesn’t remember the first cautious first minute steps to the “big network”, and then the many hours of freezes at more favorable nightly rates ... During the period from the 90s to the 99th years, the formation of not the smallest (in the future) segment of the world wide Internet network occurred.
The history of the Russian Internet can be safely started from 1990, when in January, the Glasnet public organization was created with the funding of the American Association for Progressive Communications from San Francisco. The name Glasnet was also coined by the Americans, combining the words Glasnost and Network. This public organization was called upon to provide teachers, human rights defenders, environmentalists and other guarantors of an open society with communication. In 1993, Glasnet became a commercial provider. Later, on July 1, 1999, it merged with Sovam Teleport. And on September 2 of the same year, Sovam Teleport and Moscow Telephone Communications merged with TeleRoss LLC.
The landmark events of 1990 did not end there. In August, the Relcom computer network was founded (the name is derived from RELiable COMmunications - reliable communication). The network was attended by specialists from the Demos cooperative (later - Demos Company LLC), most of them were employees of the Kurchatov Institute. By the end of the year, about 30 organizations were connected to the network, among them - centers of Russian science in Serpukhov, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Dubna. The network was based solely on UUCP email technology, with the possibility of correspondence in Russian as well.
In February 1991, the first communication session between Moscow and Barnaul took place through modem communication at a speed of 9600 baud using the basic TCP / IP protocol. And on May 1, the amount of domestic Russian network traffic exceeded the exchange between us and the west. The network really became Russian.
In the same year, the use of teleconferences was mastered, which, through the first mail server, provided e-mail messages to users by subscription. And the Institute of Commercial Engineering launched the project "InfoMarket", which set as its task information support of the Russian securities market with the latest Internet technologies.
In July 1992, Relcom network was officially registered in the pan-European EUnet network under the name EUnet / Relcom and became the largest on the European continent. And in the middle of the year, Relcom began the experimental introduction of an on-line IP-protocol that provides real-time connection and expands the list of services available for use in addition to email. With the active participation of Relcom JSC and using the capabilities of the EUnet / Relcom network, a project was launched to create the scientific non-profit network RELARN, the head organization of which is RosNIIROS.
In the same year, a new channel to the West through Amsterdam was commissioned, which increased the corresponding throughput by about four times.
Since 1993, the company Demos On-Line has been leading its history, which since the middle of next year has received its first users, and subsequently became one of the largest providers in Russia.
In 1994, the RU domain was registered, which can be considered the official beginning of the Russian-language Internet. As part of the state program “Universities of Russia”, the creation of a supporting infrastructure that unites university networks in various regions of Russia, the future RUNNet (Russian Universities Network), begins. The first phase covered six Russian regions and was already implemented in early 1995. Communication was based on satellite communication systems with two control centers in Moscow and St. Petersburg. By 1996, the network operated in fifteen regions.
At the initiative of Moscow State University, supported by Relcom, Demos and other large Internet providers, the first Russian IP-exchange exchange site was created at the Moscow intercity telephone exchange M-9 (M9-IX is one of the largest such nodes in Europe) , which allowed a number of Russian Internet providers to directly exchange network traffic using common equipment to reduce transit traffic.
The first Russian-language bulletin board was opened in 1995 and again belonged to the first Russian-language game “Burime”. Teacher’s Newspaper secured the right to be the first to release an electronic version of its publication. Since May 1995, the RosBusinessConsulting Agency has been leading its history, having launched its own server on the Internet and subsequently become one of the most popular and respected.
The Comcon project, which provided the possibility of free posting on the network for various, primarily Russian-speaking, non-profit projects, the first of which was the electronic library, was launched in May 1995 and continues to this day.
In September of the same year, Demos opened the Russia on the Net resource catalog, and Russia-on-line became the first mass commercial provider and opened its own information site.
November 8 founded the most popular resource www.anekdot.ru Dmitry Werner. With the support of the Cityline provider, it was moved to Russia and for a long time held the leading position in the rambler top100 ranking. It was this resource in February 1998 for the first time in history that headed one of the categories of the World Top 1000 ranking.
At the end of 1995, on the initiative of the Federal Agency for Government Communications and Information (FAPSI), work began on the creation and implementation of the project “Business Network of Russia”. The project provided for the creation of a network for commercial use, taking into account its specifics, including solving the problem of ensuring the safety of information. The project participants are FAPSI, Rostelecom, Relcom JSC, Rospak and a number of other organizations.
At the same time, the United States Council for International Research and Scientific Exchange (IREX) launched the program “Enhancing Internet Access”, which provided free access to e-mail, Internet and training for graduates of programs funded by the US government, universities, libraries and nonprofits CIS territory.
The year 1996 was marked, in addition to the creation of numerous first resources that laid the foundation for a whole galaxy of similar resources in the future, the beginning of the implementation of the Interdepartmental Program “Creating a National Computer Telecommunications Network for Science and Higher Education”. Later it was called RBNet and coordinated the activities of four leading departments in the field of science and education: the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Education, RAS and the Russian Federal Property Fund, as well as the State Communications Committee of the Russian Federation.
At the same time, in March 1996, the Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation) began implementing the University Internet Centers program, designed for five years - until 2001. The program is implemented jointly with the Government of the Russian Federation. The purchase of equipment and financial support for the University centers of the Internet in the amount of $ 100 million is carried out by the Soros Foundation. The Russian government is financing $ 30 million in satellite or terrestrial channels to connect to Russian and international telecommunication networks with a throughput of 256 kilobits per second.
Of the most significant resources created this year, the search engine rambler.ru can be noted. This is a project of the Stek company. Later, thanks to outstanding performance on indexed documents and a server, it will quickly bypass other popular search engines and will be in the lead for some time.
The Internet includes radio stations. Radio 101 first opens its own information site and begins, in addition to the VHF band, to broadcast its on the Internet. The Silver Rain radio goes even further and the first in Europe begins round-the-clock continuous broadcasting via the Internet in real time.
In general, 1996 was extremely eventful, especially regarding the discovery of the most popular resources in the future. Among them are chat “cribs”, the first issue of “zhurnal.ru”, “damn pies” and other no less interesting resources. Also this year, such players as the Cityline provider entered the Russian market, which thanks to a massive advertising company in 1997 is already known to all Russian-speaking Internet users.
In 1997, companies such as Mirabilis “marked off” released the first version of the ICQ program, which will subsequently become the most popular real-time communication tool, displacing IRC technology on the sidelines of history. In less than a year and a half, the number of Russian ICQ users was estimated at 65-130 thousand people.
On February 4, the TrubAddUrl service opened on the Cityline server, a system for automatically submitting information about Internet resources (including their URL and description) to ten search engines and directories of the Russian Network simultaneously, as well as to the “cult Russian AltaVista crawler”. In October of the same year, the service was finalized and renamed the “TAU System”.
On March 16 of the same year, the First Russian Internet Forum was organized by ROCIT and the Open Systems Publishing House. The main topic of discussion: “Use of the Internet in corporate networks”. The forum was attended by about three hundred people, representing almost 200 Russian and Western companies.
The rating system Rambler's Top 100 was launched on March 24, 1997. It allowed everyone to set a hit counter on the home page of their site and take part in the popularity rating of Russian Internet sites in various categories.
On July 15, Infoart publishing house announced the creation of the first officially registered Russian-language push-channels for the personal delivery of custom-made information via the Internet.
August 13 may be considered the day of the beginning of the fight against banners, since the banner network Reklama.ru has come into effect. On January 10 of next year, under the name Reklama.ru 2.0, an improved version of it appeared. Thanks to more advanced technology (RotaBanner), the use of “mirrors” and the ability to control the target audience, Reklama.ru in a short time ousted its predecessor, the Sputnik advertising network, from the market.
September 15 opened a free postal service Pochta.ru. Due to the imperfection of the software, it was not able to earn money normally and was soon closed.
On September 23, one of the most significant events of 1997 happened - the official opening of the Yandex search engine, which allows you to search the Russian Network with full account of the morphology of the Russian language. The new search engine is improving rapidly: it will soon be possible to formulate search queries in a natural language, to rank search results, to search for “similar documents”, etc.
1997 was the starting point in the development of the Russian Internet, as it was in this year that the beginning of the discovery of many popular (and not so) Russian-language resources was laid. A whole magazine would not be enough for all their description.
February 24, 1998 sentenced Vladimir Levin. Arrested in March 1995 for a Citibank computer robbery, a Russian hacker was sentenced by a New York court for stealing $ 3.7 million from three years in prison and a fine of $ 240,015.
April 28th. Radio 101 becomes the first Russian radio station, the number of potential listeners of which is practically unlimited on the Web (60,000 simultaneous connections are possible). And on May 7, RadioNet began work - the first radio program in Russia to be released only on the Internet. Presenter - Alexey Andreev. By March 2000, 20 programs were released, including 5 programs from the series “Voices of the Russian Internet” (interviews with famous network figures).
On June 28, the section “Regulation and Economics of SORM for Documentary Telecommunications Networks” opened on the Moscow Libertarium’s website, devoted to the discussion of SORM-2 - the “system of operational-search measures”, which makes it possible to “effectively circumvent the requirements of the Constitution and current legislation regarding FSB court ruling to limit the confidentiality of correspondence, telephone conversations, telegraphic and other messages in relation to computer networks, in particular, the Internet. ”News publication, research s, comments, as well as carrying out various actions against SORM-2, led to the fact that information about the project SORM-2, allows for total surveillance of citizens, has become available to the general public.
According to a study conducted in July by the Moscow office of International Data Corporation (IDC), the number of Russian Internet users reached 1.2 million (in 1996 there were only 384 thousand).
On August 17, a financial crisis erupted and provoked a booming demand for financial and political information. The leader in its provision was the server of RIA RosBusinessConsulting. Due to the sharply increased attendance of the RBC server, on August 17, the agency expanded the Internet channel from 512 Kbps to 1.1 Mbps. However, this was not enough. Already on August 26, the channel was expanded to 2.2 Mbit / s, and on September 21 - to 3.2 Mbit / s. (The next surge in RBC’s attendance occurred in March 1999 due to the increased interest in events in Yugoslavia - the channel was again expanded, this time to 5.5 Mbps.) On November 5, RIA RosBusinessConsulting was awarded the highest award in the Business competition -Site'98 "- GRAND PRIX. And on October 1, RBC set a kind of record for attendance on the Russian Internet - the number of visits to the server exceeded 3 million.
On November 1, the free mail service Mail.ru was opened. Unlike previous attempts to create such a service in the Russian network (Extranet and Pochta.ru), the project turned out to be very successful. Later, a 20% stake in Port.ru, which created this service, was sold to foreign investors for $ 940 thousand, resulting in a capitalization of the company, all of which is a few computers and intellectual property, amounted to $ 4.7 million. This can be considered the first major deal on the Russian Internet. On March 5, 1999, the number of registered Mail.ru users amounted to 100 thousand, on September 27 - 500 thousand, and on February 29, 2000 it reached a million.
According to the ROCIT report for 1998, the number of Russian Internet users at the end of the year was about 1.5 million. The qualitative composition of users: more than 85% are men, about 55% have higher education; About 80% of Russian-speaking users live in Russia, almost half of them in Moscow. The country has more than 300 Internet providers; created over 26 thousand information resources; the total amount of information in Russian on the Russian Network is at least 0.5 terabytes.
On January 22, 1999, Yandex began weekly monitoring of the interests of users of the Russian Network by introducing a NINI index (stands for “Inconsistency of the interests of the Internet population”) - a coefficient of change in the interests of Internet users. The index, published on Mondays, reflects the rise and fall in the number of user requests for certain keywords, the popularity of which has experienced the most notable shifts over the past week.
March 5th is significant using the Web as a means of disinformation. Late in the evening, in the Polit.ru Discussion, a message appeared about the suicide of St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakovlev. A few hours later the message was repeated by Gazeta.ru and Forum.msk.ru. It soon became clear that this was misinformation; a rebuttal followed. Nevertheless, the press responded with articles (March 12 in Novye Izvestia and March 19 in Komsomolskaya Pravda), which expressed the idea of the Internet as a whole as an environment of anonymous political provocations.
May 14 - the opening of RB2, an advertising network created by Artemy Lebedev Studio, with a banner format of 100x100 pixels. In less than a month, the RB2 network reaches one million banner impressions per day. Along the way, the development of “banner cutters” begins, which later did not become overly popular.
On July 21, a scandal erupted over the publication on the Web of the novel by Vladimir Sorokin “Blue Fat”. The discussion of a particular issue — the publication of a novel without the permission of the author — develops into a global discussion on the issue of copyright on the Internet. The author of the novel and the publishing house Ad Marginem, which has the exclusive right to publish the novel, sue Andrei Chernov and demand “to oblige the defendant to remove from his site any access to the text of the novel“ Blue Salo ”, including links to any addresses in Internet, from which it is possible to download this work. "On January 18, 2000 the case is resolved by Chernov's victory - the court rejects the lawsuit.
The round-the-clock news service Lenta.ru is open - a new result of the Effective Policy Fund's collaboration with the team that created the Gazeta.ru project in December 1998. The editor-in-chief is Anton Nosik. In a short time, Lenta.ru has become the largest information resource in the Russian Internet. In March 2000, Lenta.ru was bought by the Russian Funds Orion Capital Advisors (Internet Holding Company) investment consortium, which had previously acquired a controlling stake in the Rambler Internet portal.
On November 24, TeleRoss, part of the Golden Telecom holding, which in turn is controlled (approximately 57%) by the American corporation GTS, announced the acquisition of the St. Petersburg companies Nevalk and NevaTelecom. Prior to that, TeleRoss and Sovam Teleport and Glasnet were included.
On November 29, the SpyLOG server was opened - a system for collecting and analyzing Internet statistics. Over the next year, SpyLOG will become the most popular and reputable statistical service on the Russian Internet.
On December 6, the first media buying agency on the Russian Internet was opened (an agency specializing in buying advertising space in various media, including television and print media) Internet Media House Russia (IMHO). Founders: Stonton Research, Foundation for Social and Non-Commercial Advertising (FSNR), Artemy Lebedev Studio, Julia Solovyova, Anton Nosik. Chairman of the Board of Directors - Arsen Revazov. General Director - Julia Solovyova. One of the agency’s first actions was the launch of an advertising campaign for Internet resources on NTV (in conjunction with the Moscow representative office of Intel) from February 17 to April 2, 2000.
On December 10, the first plagiarism lawsuit in the Internet was won. At a meeting held on December 10, the arbitration court in Moscow found the cognitive book plus publishing house guilty of plagiarism and ordered it to pay compensation of 54,000 rubles in favor of the injured party, Promo.Ru and its director Timofey Bokarev.
The decade of the 90s can be safely attributed to the most important for the Russian segment of the network. It was during these years that the foundation was laid for the first resources, both virtual and physical, which subsequently allowed the Russian segment to grow to very impressive sizes.
© akeeper Alexei Korshunov.
First published in the System Administrator magazine.
The history of the Russian Internet can be safely started from 1990, when in January, the Glasnet public organization was created with the funding of the American Association for Progressive Communications from San Francisco. The name Glasnet was also coined by the Americans, combining the words Glasnost and Network. This public organization was called upon to provide teachers, human rights defenders, environmentalists and other guarantors of an open society with communication. In 1993, Glasnet became a commercial provider. Later, on July 1, 1999, it merged with Sovam Teleport. And on September 2 of the same year, Sovam Teleport and Moscow Telephone Communications merged with TeleRoss LLC.
The landmark events of 1990 did not end there. In August, the Relcom computer network was founded (the name is derived from RELiable COMmunications - reliable communication). The network was attended by specialists from the Demos cooperative (later - Demos Company LLC), most of them were employees of the Kurchatov Institute. By the end of the year, about 30 organizations were connected to the network, among them - centers of Russian science in Serpukhov, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Dubna. The network was based solely on UUCP email technology, with the possibility of correspondence in Russian as well.
In February 1991, the first communication session between Moscow and Barnaul took place through modem communication at a speed of 9600 baud using the basic TCP / IP protocol. And on May 1, the amount of domestic Russian network traffic exceeded the exchange between us and the west. The network really became Russian.
In the same year, the use of teleconferences was mastered, which, through the first mail server, provided e-mail messages to users by subscription. And the Institute of Commercial Engineering launched the project "InfoMarket", which set as its task information support of the Russian securities market with the latest Internet technologies.
In July 1992, Relcom network was officially registered in the pan-European EUnet network under the name EUnet / Relcom and became the largest on the European continent. And in the middle of the year, Relcom began the experimental introduction of an on-line IP-protocol that provides real-time connection and expands the list of services available for use in addition to email. With the active participation of Relcom JSC and using the capabilities of the EUnet / Relcom network, a project was launched to create the scientific non-profit network RELARN, the head organization of which is RosNIIROS.
In the same year, a new channel to the West through Amsterdam was commissioned, which increased the corresponding throughput by about four times.
Since 1993, the company Demos On-Line has been leading its history, which since the middle of next year has received its first users, and subsequently became one of the largest providers in Russia.
In 1994, the RU domain was registered, which can be considered the official beginning of the Russian-language Internet. As part of the state program “Universities of Russia”, the creation of a supporting infrastructure that unites university networks in various regions of Russia, the future RUNNet (Russian Universities Network), begins. The first phase covered six Russian regions and was already implemented in early 1995. Communication was based on satellite communication systems with two control centers in Moscow and St. Petersburg. By 1996, the network operated in fifteen regions.
At the initiative of Moscow State University, supported by Relcom, Demos and other large Internet providers, the first Russian IP-exchange exchange site was created at the Moscow intercity telephone exchange M-9 (M9-IX is one of the largest such nodes in Europe) , which allowed a number of Russian Internet providers to directly exchange network traffic using common equipment to reduce transit traffic.
The first Russian-language bulletin board was opened in 1995 and again belonged to the first Russian-language game “Burime”. Teacher’s Newspaper secured the right to be the first to release an electronic version of its publication. Since May 1995, the RosBusinessConsulting Agency has been leading its history, having launched its own server on the Internet and subsequently become one of the most popular and respected.
The Comcon project, which provided the possibility of free posting on the network for various, primarily Russian-speaking, non-profit projects, the first of which was the electronic library, was launched in May 1995 and continues to this day.
In September of the same year, Demos opened the Russia on the Net resource catalog, and Russia-on-line became the first mass commercial provider and opened its own information site.
November 8 founded the most popular resource www.anekdot.ru Dmitry Werner. With the support of the Cityline provider, it was moved to Russia and for a long time held the leading position in the rambler top100 ranking. It was this resource in February 1998 for the first time in history that headed one of the categories of the World Top 1000 ranking.
At the end of 1995, on the initiative of the Federal Agency for Government Communications and Information (FAPSI), work began on the creation and implementation of the project “Business Network of Russia”. The project provided for the creation of a network for commercial use, taking into account its specifics, including solving the problem of ensuring the safety of information. The project participants are FAPSI, Rostelecom, Relcom JSC, Rospak and a number of other organizations.
At the same time, the United States Council for International Research and Scientific Exchange (IREX) launched the program “Enhancing Internet Access”, which provided free access to e-mail, Internet and training for graduates of programs funded by the US government, universities, libraries and nonprofits CIS territory.
The year 1996 was marked, in addition to the creation of numerous first resources that laid the foundation for a whole galaxy of similar resources in the future, the beginning of the implementation of the Interdepartmental Program “Creating a National Computer Telecommunications Network for Science and Higher Education”. Later it was called RBNet and coordinated the activities of four leading departments in the field of science and education: the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Education, RAS and the Russian Federal Property Fund, as well as the State Communications Committee of the Russian Federation.
At the same time, in March 1996, the Open Society Institute (Soros Foundation) began implementing the University Internet Centers program, designed for five years - until 2001. The program is implemented jointly with the Government of the Russian Federation. The purchase of equipment and financial support for the University centers of the Internet in the amount of $ 100 million is carried out by the Soros Foundation. The Russian government is financing $ 30 million in satellite or terrestrial channels to connect to Russian and international telecommunication networks with a throughput of 256 kilobits per second.
Of the most significant resources created this year, the search engine rambler.ru can be noted. This is a project of the Stek company. Later, thanks to outstanding performance on indexed documents and a server, it will quickly bypass other popular search engines and will be in the lead for some time.
The Internet includes radio stations. Radio 101 first opens its own information site and begins, in addition to the VHF band, to broadcast its on the Internet. The Silver Rain radio goes even further and the first in Europe begins round-the-clock continuous broadcasting via the Internet in real time.
In general, 1996 was extremely eventful, especially regarding the discovery of the most popular resources in the future. Among them are chat “cribs”, the first issue of “zhurnal.ru”, “damn pies” and other no less interesting resources. Also this year, such players as the Cityline provider entered the Russian market, which thanks to a massive advertising company in 1997 is already known to all Russian-speaking Internet users.
In 1997, companies such as Mirabilis “marked off” released the first version of the ICQ program, which will subsequently become the most popular real-time communication tool, displacing IRC technology on the sidelines of history. In less than a year and a half, the number of Russian ICQ users was estimated at 65-130 thousand people.
On February 4, the TrubAddUrl service opened on the Cityline server, a system for automatically submitting information about Internet resources (including their URL and description) to ten search engines and directories of the Russian Network simultaneously, as well as to the “cult Russian AltaVista crawler”. In October of the same year, the service was finalized and renamed the “TAU System”.
On March 16 of the same year, the First Russian Internet Forum was organized by ROCIT and the Open Systems Publishing House. The main topic of discussion: “Use of the Internet in corporate networks”. The forum was attended by about three hundred people, representing almost 200 Russian and Western companies.
The rating system Rambler's Top 100 was launched on March 24, 1997. It allowed everyone to set a hit counter on the home page of their site and take part in the popularity rating of Russian Internet sites in various categories.
On July 15, Infoart publishing house announced the creation of the first officially registered Russian-language push-channels for the personal delivery of custom-made information via the Internet.
August 13 may be considered the day of the beginning of the fight against banners, since the banner network Reklama.ru has come into effect. On January 10 of next year, under the name Reklama.ru 2.0, an improved version of it appeared. Thanks to more advanced technology (RotaBanner), the use of “mirrors” and the ability to control the target audience, Reklama.ru in a short time ousted its predecessor, the Sputnik advertising network, from the market.
September 15 opened a free postal service Pochta.ru. Due to the imperfection of the software, it was not able to earn money normally and was soon closed.
On September 23, one of the most significant events of 1997 happened - the official opening of the Yandex search engine, which allows you to search the Russian Network with full account of the morphology of the Russian language. The new search engine is improving rapidly: it will soon be possible to formulate search queries in a natural language, to rank search results, to search for “similar documents”, etc.
1997 was the starting point in the development of the Russian Internet, as it was in this year that the beginning of the discovery of many popular (and not so) Russian-language resources was laid. A whole magazine would not be enough for all their description.
February 24, 1998 sentenced Vladimir Levin. Arrested in March 1995 for a Citibank computer robbery, a Russian hacker was sentenced by a New York court for stealing $ 3.7 million from three years in prison and a fine of $ 240,015.
April 28th. Radio 101 becomes the first Russian radio station, the number of potential listeners of which is practically unlimited on the Web (60,000 simultaneous connections are possible). And on May 7, RadioNet began work - the first radio program in Russia to be released only on the Internet. Presenter - Alexey Andreev. By March 2000, 20 programs were released, including 5 programs from the series “Voices of the Russian Internet” (interviews with famous network figures).
On June 28, the section “Regulation and Economics of SORM for Documentary Telecommunications Networks” opened on the Moscow Libertarium’s website, devoted to the discussion of SORM-2 - the “system of operational-search measures”, which makes it possible to “effectively circumvent the requirements of the Constitution and current legislation regarding FSB court ruling to limit the confidentiality of correspondence, telephone conversations, telegraphic and other messages in relation to computer networks, in particular, the Internet. ”News publication, research s, comments, as well as carrying out various actions against SORM-2, led to the fact that information about the project SORM-2, allows for total surveillance of citizens, has become available to the general public.
According to a study conducted in July by the Moscow office of International Data Corporation (IDC), the number of Russian Internet users reached 1.2 million (in 1996 there were only 384 thousand).
On August 17, a financial crisis erupted and provoked a booming demand for financial and political information. The leader in its provision was the server of RIA RosBusinessConsulting. Due to the sharply increased attendance of the RBC server, on August 17, the agency expanded the Internet channel from 512 Kbps to 1.1 Mbps. However, this was not enough. Already on August 26, the channel was expanded to 2.2 Mbit / s, and on September 21 - to 3.2 Mbit / s. (The next surge in RBC’s attendance occurred in March 1999 due to the increased interest in events in Yugoslavia - the channel was again expanded, this time to 5.5 Mbps.) On November 5, RIA RosBusinessConsulting was awarded the highest award in the Business competition -Site'98 "- GRAND PRIX. And on October 1, RBC set a kind of record for attendance on the Russian Internet - the number of visits to the server exceeded 3 million.
On November 1, the free mail service Mail.ru was opened. Unlike previous attempts to create such a service in the Russian network (Extranet and Pochta.ru), the project turned out to be very successful. Later, a 20% stake in Port.ru, which created this service, was sold to foreign investors for $ 940 thousand, resulting in a capitalization of the company, all of which is a few computers and intellectual property, amounted to $ 4.7 million. This can be considered the first major deal on the Russian Internet. On March 5, 1999, the number of registered Mail.ru users amounted to 100 thousand, on September 27 - 500 thousand, and on February 29, 2000 it reached a million.
According to the ROCIT report for 1998, the number of Russian Internet users at the end of the year was about 1.5 million. The qualitative composition of users: more than 85% are men, about 55% have higher education; About 80% of Russian-speaking users live in Russia, almost half of them in Moscow. The country has more than 300 Internet providers; created over 26 thousand information resources; the total amount of information in Russian on the Russian Network is at least 0.5 terabytes.
On January 22, 1999, Yandex began weekly monitoring of the interests of users of the Russian Network by introducing a NINI index (stands for “Inconsistency of the interests of the Internet population”) - a coefficient of change in the interests of Internet users. The index, published on Mondays, reflects the rise and fall in the number of user requests for certain keywords, the popularity of which has experienced the most notable shifts over the past week.
March 5th is significant using the Web as a means of disinformation. Late in the evening, in the Polit.ru Discussion, a message appeared about the suicide of St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakovlev. A few hours later the message was repeated by Gazeta.ru and Forum.msk.ru. It soon became clear that this was misinformation; a rebuttal followed. Nevertheless, the press responded with articles (March 12 in Novye Izvestia and March 19 in Komsomolskaya Pravda), which expressed the idea of the Internet as a whole as an environment of anonymous political provocations.
May 14 - the opening of RB2, an advertising network created by Artemy Lebedev Studio, with a banner format of 100x100 pixels. In less than a month, the RB2 network reaches one million banner impressions per day. Along the way, the development of “banner cutters” begins, which later did not become overly popular.
On July 21, a scandal erupted over the publication on the Web of the novel by Vladimir Sorokin “Blue Fat”. The discussion of a particular issue — the publication of a novel without the permission of the author — develops into a global discussion on the issue of copyright on the Internet. The author of the novel and the publishing house Ad Marginem, which has the exclusive right to publish the novel, sue Andrei Chernov and demand “to oblige the defendant to remove from his site any access to the text of the novel“ Blue Salo ”, including links to any addresses in Internet, from which it is possible to download this work. "On January 18, 2000 the case is resolved by Chernov's victory - the court rejects the lawsuit.
The round-the-clock news service Lenta.ru is open - a new result of the Effective Policy Fund's collaboration with the team that created the Gazeta.ru project in December 1998. The editor-in-chief is Anton Nosik. In a short time, Lenta.ru has become the largest information resource in the Russian Internet. In March 2000, Lenta.ru was bought by the Russian Funds Orion Capital Advisors (Internet Holding Company) investment consortium, which had previously acquired a controlling stake in the Rambler Internet portal.
On November 24, TeleRoss, part of the Golden Telecom holding, which in turn is controlled (approximately 57%) by the American corporation GTS, announced the acquisition of the St. Petersburg companies Nevalk and NevaTelecom. Prior to that, TeleRoss and Sovam Teleport and Glasnet were included.
On November 29, the SpyLOG server was opened - a system for collecting and analyzing Internet statistics. Over the next year, SpyLOG will become the most popular and reputable statistical service on the Russian Internet.
On December 6, the first media buying agency on the Russian Internet was opened (an agency specializing in buying advertising space in various media, including television and print media) Internet Media House Russia (IMHO). Founders: Stonton Research, Foundation for Social and Non-Commercial Advertising (FSNR), Artemy Lebedev Studio, Julia Solovyova, Anton Nosik. Chairman of the Board of Directors - Arsen Revazov. General Director - Julia Solovyova. One of the agency’s first actions was the launch of an advertising campaign for Internet resources on NTV (in conjunction with the Moscow representative office of Intel) from February 17 to April 2, 2000.
On December 10, the first plagiarism lawsuit in the Internet was won. At a meeting held on December 10, the arbitration court in Moscow found the cognitive book plus publishing house guilty of plagiarism and ordered it to pay compensation of 54,000 rubles in favor of the injured party, Promo.Ru and its director Timofey Bokarev.
The decade of the 90s can be safely attributed to the most important for the Russian segment of the network. It was during these years that the foundation was laid for the first resources, both virtual and physical, which subsequently allowed the Russian segment to grow to very impressive sizes.
© akeeper Alexei Korshunov.
First published in the System Administrator magazine.