Vedomosti, January 14, 2003

Russian Internet sites increase rapidly

Last year, the Russian Internet saw an unprecedented rise in the number of .ru second-level domains (i.e. the number of web sites www.name.ru). The number of web sites was increasing even faster than the number of Internet users.

A rising interest in purchasing new Internet addresses was registered not only by the Russian Institute for Public Networks (RIPN) but also by independent domain registrars. "Last year, we registered about 3,000 .ru domains This year, we expect to register about 5,000 domains already," head of the RBC Hosting Center Dmitry Stepanov said.

Most experts state that the Russian Internet is rapidly becoming commercialized. The majority of newly registered Russian Internet addresses (about 60 percent according to data from Ru-Center) are registered by legal entities. Public opinion polls conducted by RBC experts show that 61 percent of new web sites are intended for commercial use. According to Dmitry Stepanov, the number of domains purchased for corporate sites this year surpassed the number of web addresses registered for information resources.

Yury Granovsky