AOL Starts Russian Search Engine
American media company America Online has entered the MB>Russian market with a localized version of its Truveo site. AOL Truveo's Russian-language site ru.truveo.com was unveiled on Friday. The site also premiered versions for Australia, Brazil, Italy, Mexico, The Netherlands and Turkey, which join sites for France, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Spain, Taiwan, the United Kingdon and United States. Truveo performs keyword searches of videos on other sites and redirects the user to the site the video is posted on.
Company spokesman Joshua Weinberg told Kommersant that Truveo has yet to turn a profit. Its goal is to become the global video search leader. It plans to carry advertising within two years. Truveo was started in 2004 and bought by AOL at the end of 2005. Exports say AOL paid at least $50 million for it. The site gets more than 40 million visitors per month.
Although experts say the future looks rosy for Truveo, it faces tough competition in Russia. “A video search engine is unlikely to become a major player in the Russian market,” said Finam analyst Leonid Delitsyn. He noted that the popular Russian site mail.ru has a video search engine, and Rambler and Yandex will soon have them as well. “Truveo will be able occupy no more than 15 percent of the advertising market for video sites by 2010, which will be worth $35 million by then,” Delitsyn added.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Dec. 17, 2007
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