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Bartlomiej Owczarek weblog

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Search in CEE: Google is an underdog in some countries

Antyweb quoted the Next web article about search in Russia. What’s interesting in Russian search? It is not dominated by Google:

Most European search markets are dominated by Google and there seem to be no real local competitors. In Russia however, a fierce battle for the search query’s of the consumers is going on. Yakov Sadchikov from Quintura even mailed me that “the Russian search engines are coming.”

Reasons? Commenters point at different character set and language peculiarities (for example different grammatical cases).

Thanks to friends at Gemius I had an opportunity to read some interesting stuff about Internet markets in other CEE countries.. and Russian case is not the only one, even though in most countries Google rules the market.

In Czech Republic, for example, Seznam.cz has approximately 60% share in search. But, Google search is gaining share there.

“Other” search engines have also significant share in Ukraine, Slovenia and Estonia.

In Poland, on the other hand, Google has 90% of the market, grammatical cases notwithstanding.




Steve Jobs’s hidden corporate strategy

Businessweek suspects Steve Jobs of a hidden agenda, aimed at getting into corporations.

Hints: iPhone functionalities aimed at corporates, co-existence of Windows and OS X made as easy as ever.

Meanwhile, my Mac just changed hands in Wroclaw and is set for the final ride to Warsaw. It’s been a long journey.

Mac’s purpose is far from innocent as my corporate colleagues, knowing me, could immediately tell.