Fresh on the heels of its WebVisor acquisition just two weeks ago, Yandex announces the acquisition of yet another Russian Internet startup. Loginza, a web plugin developer, decided to a accept theYandex offer rather than trying to raise venture capital on its own.
The deal has been estimated to be worth less than USD 1 million. Yandex learned of the Loginza project, just as it did WebVisor, through its Yandex.Start program instituted as a vehicle for finding new projects. The next Yandex.Start will be conducted in mid-March.
Loginza (www.loginza.ru)
Loginza is the creation of Sergey Arsenichev, who was inspired by the OpenID login service. The company’s anchor product, a user authentication plugin, is used on more than 6,500 web sites. Furthermore, the plugin’s protocol is supported by dozens of other sites; among them Blogger, Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, Mail.Ru, Rambler, and Yandex.
With Loginza, internet users can simply login once, than access any of the other participating websites without having to separately sign in again. The company was established in April 2010.
Yandex (www.yandex.ru)
As the largest Internet search engine in the Russian-speaking world, Yandex aims to be Russia’s leading Internet and technology company. They specialize in taking their understanding of Russian culture and language and applying it to a search portal which provides services like national and international news, local news, e-mail, user content, and more.
As of 2Q 2010 Yandex controlled roughly 64% of the Russian internet search market, followed by second-place Google at 22.1%. Total ad revenue in 2009 was reported at $278 million.
04/02/2011
Central & Eastern Europe, Internet, E-Commerce & E-Services, Private Equity News, Russia, Software & Information Technology