VK, known as Mail.ru Group until 12 October 2021, is a Russian technology company. It started in 1998 as the parent company of Mail.ru, an e-mail service and went on to become a major corporate figure in the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet. VK operates an e-mail service, Internet portal Mail.ru, and Russian

social networking service A social networking service (SNS), or social networking site, is a type of online social media platform which people use to build social networks or social relationships with other people who share similar personal or career content, interest ...

s VK,

Odnoklassniki Odnoklassniki (), abbreviated as OK or OK.ru, is a social networking service and online video sharing website primarily in Russia and former Soviet Republics. The site was launched on March 4, 2006 by Albert Popkov and is currently owned by VK. ...

and Moi Mir. Additionally, VK manages various

e-commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) refers to commercial activities including the electronic buying or selling products and services which are conducted on online platforms or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile co ...

, transport and communication platforms. It also offers business-oriented products, including a corporate email and communication system. In 2014 VK's sites reached approximately 86% of Russian Internet users on a monthly basis and the company was in the top 5 of the largest Internet companies based on the number of total pages viewed. In October 2021 Mail.ru Group was renamed VK Company Limited, after its most popular product,

VKontakte (short for its original name ''VKontakte''; , meaning ''InContact'') is a Russian online social media and social networking service based in Saint Petersburg. VK is available in multiple languages but it is predominantly used by Russian speake ...

History

The business was originally owned by Port.ru, a company founded in 1998 by Eugene Goland, Michael Zaitsev and Alexey Krivenkov as a spin-off from DataArt. It received an initial investment of US$1 million from investor James Melcher. The Mail.ru business expanded rapidly to reach the No. 1 market position in Russia by 2000. Attempts to fund the company's expansion in 2000–2001 were thwarted by the collapse of the technology bubble and Mail.ru had to seek merger partners. In 2001

Yuri Milner Yuri Borisovich (Bentsionovich) Milner (, ; born 11 November 1961) is a Soviet-born Israeli entrepreneur, investor, physicist and scientist. He is a co-founder and former chairperson of internet company Mail.Ru Group (later VK), and a founder ...

, at the time managing NetBridge (the owner of several internet brands), persuaded the entrepreneur Igor Linshits to back a merger of the Mail.ru business with NetBridge. Igor Linshits subsequently took an active role in the development of the Mail.ru business. In connection with the merger, Milner became Mail.ru CEO. The company began to operate as Mail.ru on 16 October 2001 and was headed by Dmitry Grishin. Before that time its brand name was owned by Port.ru. In 2003 Milner resigned from Mail.ru and subsequently set up another internet venture, Digital Sky Technologies (DST). In 2006 Igor Linshits sold his stake in Mail.ru to Tiger Fund and Milner's DST for more than $100 million. In September 2010, DST changed its name to Mail.ru Group. Dmitry Grishin became one of the Mail.ru Group co-founders. In February 2010 Mail.ru announced the 100% acquisition of the video game developer Astrum Nival from its former owners. From that point, Astrum Nival acts under the name of Mail.ru. On 29 September 2011, the studio was renamed to Allods Team. The studio is known for developing '' Allods Online'' and '' Skyforge''. In October 2010 Mail.ru Group announced plans for an IPO via the

London Stock Exchange The London Stock Exchange (LSE) is a stock exchange based in London, England. the total market value of all companies trading on the LSE stood at US$3.42 trillion. Its current premises are situated in Paternoster Square close to St Paul's Cath ...

listing of a subsidiary – also called Mail.ru – worth more than $5 billion. The IPO offered a stake of about 17% of the subsidiary. The subsidiary included about a quarter of the group's shareholding in

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

, stakes in Russia's two biggest social networking sites and Mail.ru. The company hired

Goldman Sachs The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered in Lower Manhattan in New York City, with regional headquarters in many internationa ...

JP Morgan JPMorgan Chase & Co. (stylized as JPMorganChase) is an American multinational finance corporation headquartered in New York City and incorporated in Delaware. It is the largest bank in the United States, and the world's largest bank by mar ...

Morgan Stanley Morgan Stanley is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company headquartered at 1585 Broadway in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. With offices in 42 countries and more than 80,000 employees, the firm's clients in ...

and VTB Capital to run the listing. After the public offering, the global operations of Mail.ru Group continued as the privately held company

DST Global DST Global is a venture capital and private equity firm that primarily invests in late-stage internet companies. DST Global has been described as one of the largest and most influential venture firms in the world, with an estimated $50 bill ...

. Major shareholders at the time included Alisher Usmanov, Mail.ru Group's corporate sibling

Tencent Holdings Tencent Holdings Ltd. ( zh, s=腾讯, p=Téngxùn) is a Chinese multinational technology conglomerate and holding company headquartered in Shenzhen. It is one of the highest grossing multimedia companies in the world based on revenue. It is ...

, Tencent's largest shareholder Prosus, and

Tiger Management Tiger Management Corp. is an American hedge fund and family office founded by Julian Robertson. The fund began investing in 1980 and wound down in March 2000-01. It continues to operate in direct public equity investments and seeding new inves ...

. In March 2012 Milner stepped down from the role of Chairman of Mail.ru and from the board of directors. Dmitry Grishin was elected to the board of directors and appointed as chairman of the Board while retaining his CEO position. There were no other changes to management or to the Board. On 11 May 2022, Dmitry Grishin stepped down as chairman of the board of directors and non-executive director of the company In November 2012 it was reported that Mail.ru would discontinue using Google search services.Mail.Ru откажется от поисковых услуг Google
// Vesti.ru Full migration to the use of Mail.ru's own engine occurred in the summer of 2013.Jennifer Slegg: Russia's Mail.Ru Drops Google Search, Launches Own Search Engine
// searchenginewatch.com, 3 July 2013 In late 2012 Mail.ru Group's plans for buying two-letter domain My.com became known. This was interpreted as an intention of dominating world markets and of the upcoming re-branding of services under this name.Mail.ru пойдет за рубеж с новым именем
// dp.ru, 30 October 2012 At the end of 2012, Mail.ru Group bought the Ukrainian email service mail.ua and the registration of email addresses using this domain started on 23 April 2013. On 3 October 2016 Mail.ru announced that they had acquired 100% of the game developer Pixonic's shares. In January 2018 Mail.ru acquired ESForce, a holding company that owns a number of different esports businesses, including both

Virtus.pro Virtus.pro (VP) is an international esports organization founded in 2003 in Russia and acquired by Armenian investors in 2022. The organization has players competing in such games as ''Counter-Strike 2'', ''Dota 2'', ''Rainbow Six Siege'', ''War ...

and

SK Gaming SK Gaming is a professional esports organization based in Germany that has teams across the world competing in different titles. SK is particularly known for their success in '' Counter-Strike'' (CS) tournaments. SK's Brazilian ''CS'' team won ...

, for US$150 million. In September 2018 Alibaba announced buying a 10% stake in Mail.ru, which would have a value of $484 million based on Mail.ru's market capitalization on 10 September 2018. In July 2019 Tencent-backed iDreamSky Technology Holdings and Mail.ru Group announced an alliance in the gaming sector in China and Europe. In December 2019, Mail.ru Group formed a partnership with

Sberbank The Public JSC Sberbank (, initially a contraction of ) is a Russian majority state-owned banking and financial services company headquartered in Moscow. As the Russian successor entity of the State Labor Savings Banks System of the USSR, it was ...

to develop the food and transportation service O2O. In 2020 the state Russian Direct Investment Fund, China's Tencent, Naspers, and others bought $600 million of GDRs and bonds from Mail.ru. The funds were raised for the development of O2O and AliExpress Russia. In October 2021

Sberbank of Russia The Public JSC Sberbank (, initially a contraction of ) is a Russian majority state-owned banking and financial services company headquartered in Moscow. As the Russian successor entity of the State Labor Savings Banks System of the USSR, it was ...

and "Mail.ru Group" invested 6,1 billion roubles each O2O food and transportation service, the total of their investments in equal shares now touching about 43 billion roubles in 2021. On the whole, shares of both investors did not change from 45,01% each. In November 2021 Sberbank of Russia signed binding papers for selling its 36% of shares of "MF Tekhnologii" (controlling entity of VK company) to

Gazprombank Gazprombank (), or GPB (JSC), is a private-owned Russian bank, the third largest bank in the country by assets. Since November 2014, Nikolai Shamalov#Yuri Shamalov, Yuri Shamalov's Gazfond is its largest shareholder. Gazprombank is one of the m ...

for 12,8 billion of roubles by the end of the year 2021. In December 2021 Sogaz Group bought all USM's (owned by Alisher Usmanov and his partners) indirect stake in "MF Tekhnologii" (controlling 57,3% of VK company). The state-run insurance company Sogaz Group is partly owned by

Vladimir Putin Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who has served as President of Russia since 2012, having previously served from 2000 to 2008. Putin also served as Prime Minister of Ru ...

's close friend Yury Kovalchuk. On 26 September 2022 the VKontakte social networking app was removed from Apple's App Store, along with VK's Mail.ru, Mail.ru Cloud, VK Music, and VK Clips. On 7 October 2022 VK's subsidiary "ITR" acquired 87.2% of the interactive video platform developer Movika On 19 December 2022 VK announced the signing of a contract to acquire 51% of LLC "Medium Quality Production", one of the leaders in digital video content production in the CIS. In February 2023, VK acquired 75% of the educational portal Uchi.ru for RUB 8.7bn, consolidating 100% of the company. In turn, in December, Uchi.ru received approval from the Federal Antimonopoly Service to purchase the UFirst chain of English language schools, which is the successor of English First schools. In early July 2023, one of VK's structures, VK Digital Technologies, was awarded a contract to automate the work of officials. The project includes transferring Russian civil servants from Telegram to domestic communication services. In December, it was announced that it had bought a 100% stake in YClients Group, Russia's largest online enrolment and business automation platform for an unnamed amount. The company had 37,000 SME customers in 2022. In February 2024, the company announced that it had developed its own large language model (LLM). In particular, comments from open VKontakte groups were used in its training. The first generative capabilities of the model are being tested on Mail.ru services. In May 2024, VK closed a deal to buy ticket aggregator Intickets. The company received a 40% stake in the platform, which is a contractor for Moscow museums and theatres.

Services

VK Group offers a variety of online communication products and entertainment services for Russian speakers all over the world, such as: * Email & portal – Mail E-mail, Main portal, content projects * Social networks – VK, OK.ru, My World * Instant messaging – Agent, ICQ * Online Games via a newly founded brand called My.Games – MMO games, Social games, Mobile games * Search & e-commerce – Search, Headhunter, Price comparison * My.com – integrated communication and entertainment platform. * Cloud – cloud storage similar to

Dropbox Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by the American company Dropbox, Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, California, that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, personal cloud, and Client (computing), client software. Dropbox w ...

, apps available for PC and smartphones *

– private equity and venture capital investments * – voice virtual assistant app for smartphones * –

smart speaker A smart speaker is a type of loudspeaker and voice command device with an integrated virtual assistant (artificial intelligence), virtual assistant that offers interactive actions and Hands-free computing, hands-free activation with the help of o ...

* – stream monetizing service

Controversies

On 15 May 2017 Ukrainian President

Petro Poroshenko Petro Oleksiiovych Poroshenko (born 26 September 1965) is a Ukraine, Ukrainian politician and Oligarchy, oligarch who served as the fifth president of Ukraine from 2014 to 2019. He served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs (Ukraine), Minister ...

signed a decree to impose a ban on Mail.ru and its social networking services including

and

as part of Ukraine's continued sanctions on Russia for its annexation of Crimea and involvement in the

war in Donbas The war in Donbas, or the Donbas war, was a phase of the Russo-Ukrainian War in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine. The war Timeline of the war in Donbas (2014), began in April 2014, when Russian separatist forces in Ukraine, Russian para ...

. The move was widely criticised as censorship, and

Reporters Without Borders Reporters Without Borders (RWB; ; RSF) is an international non-profit and non-governmental organisation, non-governmental organization headquartered in Paris, which focuses on safeguarding the right to freedom of information. It describes its a ...

condemned the ban, calling it a "disproportionate measure that seriously undermines the Ukrainian people's right to information and freedom of expression."Ukraine's Poroshenko to block Russian social networks

BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...

(16 May 2017) Mail.ru itself estimated (in August 2017) that the ban had cost them around 1.5% of total revenues in 2017. On 5 November 2017 the

Paradise Papers The Paradise Papers are a set of over 13.4 million confidential electronic documents relating to offshore investments that were leaked to the German reporters Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer, from the newspaper'' Süddeutsche Z ...

, a set of confidential

electronic document An electronic document is a document that can be sent in non-physical means, such as telex, email, and the internet. Originally, any computer data were considered as something internal—the final data output was always on paper. However, the ...

s relating to

offshore investment Offshore investment is the keeping of money in a jurisdiction other than one's country of residence. Offshore jurisdictions are used to pay less tax in many countries by large and small-scale investors. Poorly regulated offshore domiciles have ser ...

, revealed that Russian state organizations with ties to

pursued between 2009 and 2011 large investments in

and

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

via an intermediary—Russian-American billionaire and entrepreneur

, founder of Mail.ru and DST Global, who had befriended Facebook founder

Mark Zuckerberg Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (; born May 14, 1984) is an American businessman who co-founded the social media service Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms, of which he is the chairman, chief executive officer, and controlling sharehold ...

Kremlin-owned Firms Linked to Major Investments in Twitter and Facebook
. ''International Consortium of Investigative Journalists – ICIJ.'' 5 November 2017. and was a business associate of

Jared Kushner Jared Corey Kushner (born January 10, 1981) is an American businessman and investor. He is a son-in-law of the president of the United States, Donald Trump, through his marriage to Ivanka Trump and served as a senior advisor in his father-in- ...

, President

Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who is the 47th president of the United States. A member of the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party, he served as the 45 ...

's son-in-law. In 2023, a Moscow magistrate court fined VK roubles () for leaking the data of 3.5 million Mail.ru users.

References

External links

* {{Authority control Webmail Internet technology companies of Russia Russian brands Web portals Internet search engines Internet censorship in Ukraine Companies listed on the London Stock Exchange Internet properties established in 1998 1998 establishments in Russia 2010 initial public offerings Companies based in Moscow Video game companies of Russia Yuri Milner