Comments on: Zd`rravstvuite: Google May Be Buying Ukrainian Portal Bigmir)net For $100 Million

By: Vita

Vita — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 15:14:37 +0000

Hello everyone,

Reaching out to any/all talents or believers of Russian/Ukrainian ecommerce/portal global future to join our start up effort. We are in Chicago. Feel free to email min.vita@gmail.com

By: Alexey

Alexey — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 14:40:45 +0000

Umm, the leading Ukranian Portal is Ukr.Net, even by BigMir’s own TOP Ratings service.

By: Jugo

Jugo — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 13:03:44 +0000

Yeah, not worth making fun of Duncan anymore. I almost feel sorry for the guy. Still I have to laugh: ha! I don’t speak Ukrainian nor Russian but I knew at a glance that he got the headline wrong. And I knew without even a glance that he got the story wrong.

By: Roman

Roman — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 05:42:22 +0000

Duncan - please change the Russian word to Ukrainian if you are serious about being an accurate blogger. Huge cultural mistake. Huge.

By: Sergey Kovalyov

Sergey Kovalyov — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 15:35:00 +0000

Just a Bigmir.net dream.

By: Sergey

Sergey — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 14:58:17 +0000

ArMikael.

I wonder why you are writing about ‘pay-to-top’ principle for Yandex.
Any webmaster could register his site in Yandex for free, here http://webmaster.yandex.ru/.

By: Deal RoundUp: Feb 21, 2008 : unitedBIT

Deal RoundUp: Feb 21, 2008 : unitedBIT — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 12:56:51 +0000

[...] Rumor: According to local press reports, Google may have acquired Ukrainian Portal Bigmir)net for $100 million. Bigmir)net is a Ukrainian version of Mail.ru, a site Google is said to have be interested in last year (but missed out on) that ended up with a $1 billion valuation. According to Quintura, Bigmir)net was launched in September 2000 with reported revenues of $15 million in 2006 and raised $11 million in a previous part IPO. Source:TechCrunch [...]

By: Damnit

Damnit — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 07:18:40 +0000

Yet more evidence that Duncan Riley will believe anything.

It’s almost not even worth making fun of him anymore.

By: SACKOFDOUBLETRUTH

SACKOFDOUBLETRUTH — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 23:28:33 +0000

PERSAI OWNS YOU DUNCAN RILEY. IT WILL CONSUME YOUR SOULLLLL!!!

By: Amit Raman

Amit Raman — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 22:42:29 +0000

Why are people so in love with Google?

http://www.chai-yah.com

By: ArMikael

ArMikael — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 22:09:00 +0000

@China.net, “pay-to-top” system is good untill payed links to sites is differs from sites that didn’t pay and user could understand where is adds, and where simple sites. But when all this things are going together with no differs it’s very not useful.

By: rubu

rubu — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 22:07:53 +0000

You are linking not to he site of “local press” but to the piece of shit. There are tons of sites like “Siteua.org” in Ukraine, which produce almost no their content but copypaste articles from each other and free sources.

By: ivan

ivan — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 21:50:21 +0000

2Ilan: Google could be not really for e-commerce there rather for the advertising revenue. With 10-15 million Internet users it’s already a market.

to everybody: I checked out the original source — the article refers to information received by Bigmir insiders, and that’s all! At least, I didn’t find any numbers (such as $100 million) or more specific hints.

By the way, Bigmir switched its email platform to Google Apps last October, maybe this became fuel of speculations?

By: Ilan

Ilan — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 20:15:21 +0000

Ukraine is a VERY BAD place for E-commerce. Wrong decision made here..

By: Elder

Elder — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:29:35 +0000

@14.

Thanks for the list of Google acquisitions.

By: Cavenger

Cavenger — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:16:21 +0000

Eh, what’s the killer app?

By: Maxon Pugovsky

Maxon Pugovsky — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 17:57:33 +0000

Duncan, this news is really funny.

First.
These “rumors” started several months ago when Bigmir abandoned their own email service and transfered all users to Gmail on Bigmir.net domain. Some journalists in Ukraine never heard about Google Apps. So when they noticed that new interface of Bigmir mail resemble Gmail they made a “logical” conclusion - that’s may be an acquisition.

Second.
You are linking not to he site of “local press” but to the piece of shit. There are tons of sites like “Siteua.org” in Ukraine, which produce almost no their content but copypaste articles from each other and free sources.

But even in that “article” produced by teenage content creator for that news-splog no even a word about $100 mln or any other sum of money.

Duncan, where did you get those “$100 mln” and how do you check you stories? =)

Third.
Bigmir is leading portal in Ukraine and part of KP Media, one of the leading media holdings in Ukraine. The price of Bigmir is not more than $10 mln. It is content portal like Yahoo, but without own innovative technologies. That’s not the business of Google.

(Yes, I’m from Ukraine. And I was editor-in-chief of InternetUA magazine - print publication about online media).

By: @ver

@ver — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 17:43:05 +0000

So, Google - Wellcome to Ukraine

By: Taar

Taar — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 17:13:47 +0000

Yeah, so thats why they made the bigmir mail service use gmail services..

By: Pavlo Zahozhenko

Pavlo Zahozhenko — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 16:59:03 +0000

Being a Ukrainian myself, I think this rumor is a complete nonsense! Bigmir is a typical web 1.0 portal. It has no perspectives, no innovation and no talent behind it. The only thing it has is local brand recognition and a bit of traffic. As far as I know, Bigmir cannot even deal with local competition and is dying, slowly but steadily.. Google’s move into Ukraine seems logical, but Bigmir acquisition just doesn’t make sense. If it’s true, well… it’s a waste of $100 million!)

By: MikeT

MikeT — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 16:52:38 +0000

“Zdrravstvuite” is in Russian.
In Ukrainian it’s “zdoroven’ki buly”

By: Dima

Dima — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 16:30:15 +0000

There is another hidden treasure on the Russian web which has traffic growing insanely fast. It is a russian version of classmates.com which currently has over 11million members and growing daily. It is a biggest social network on the russian market and you will see it mentioned in the press pretty soon.

http://www.odnoklassniki.ru

Check out their grows: http://www.alexa.com/data/deta.....ize=Medium

By: WebSide Ventures

WebSide Ventures — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 15:16:28 +0000

Bigmir.net translated to English:

http://tinyurl.com/35g2v2

By: other

other — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 15:14:46 +0000

“former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics”

who uses references like that - it’s not like the SU disbanded last year. idiot.

By: Natasha

Natasha — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 15:09:27 +0000

@Michael and Ghaus –

It is Yandex.ru that is the Real prize. (Yandex is a search engine that is mostly used in the .RU zone, not in the .COM zone)

compare yandex.ru and yandex.com
http://www.alexa.com/data/deta.....yandex.com