On Tuesday, Russian internet group Yandex announced that it had purchased KinoPoisk for an undisclosed amount. KinoPoisk is the largest website dedicated to movies in Russia. The domain name kinopoisk.ru would be retained as is, and that KinoPoisk would operate as an independent service entity. The team behind the Russian movie review site would be integrated with Yandex's workforce. There were no financial details of the acquisition disclosed or indicated in Yandex's announcement.
Yandex's core business is in search services. Its market share in Russia is over 60%, surpassing Google Inc as the largest search engine in the region. A major chunk of its revenue came from its text-based advertising services.
KinoPoisk was founded by Vitaliy Tatsiy and Dmitry Sukhanov. It grew into a movie review website with a following of 18.6 million users monthly as per comScore Media Metrix data. With 3 million movie reviews created every month, Kinopoisk's movie review database had grown into a collection of over 100 million movie ratings.
Earlier, an Itar-Tass news agency report said Yandex was interested in purchasing Kinopoisk, and might offer a deal worth tens of millions in dollars.
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