IT and Society: First Russian domain zone launched 17 years ago

April 7 Runet is celebrating its birthday. It was on this day, precisely 17 years ago that .RU domain zone was launched. Time has passed and today Runet enters Top 10 of the world’s major domain zones possessing more than 3 million registered names. Not to mention that within only a year of its existence its Cyrillic .RF zone reached the mark of 800 thousand names.

As for today .RU is No. 6 among all national Internet segments worldwide. It follows domains of Germany, Great Britain, China, the Netherlands and European Union.  During 2010 absolute growth of domain names in .RU zone totaled almost 600 thousand, while daily it grows with over 3 thousand new domains.

Experts are positive about further development of Russian web segment. REG.RU’s CEO Alexei Korolyuk said that within past 17 years of its existence .RU domain grew to maturity, stability and won confidence of Russian Net surfers. “.Ru domain has become an integral part of both Russian and global Internet”, he believes. Mr Korolyuk thinks that for international internet community .Ru domain still remains the main representative of Russian segment of the global web, despite a record growth of its “younger brother” — .RF domain. “Both national zones are organically developing together, complementing each other”, he mentioned.