30 years of RuNet – a brief history of the Russian Internet

Thirty years ago, on April 7, 1994, the .ru domain zone was registered and included in the international database. That’s why we celebrate the birthday of the RuNet today. In honor of this event, we decided to recall the most important events in the history of the Russian segment of the Internet.

The first attempts to establish Internet communications in our country were made many years before the appearance of specific sites. On August 1, 1990, the Relcom computer network was launched, uniting dozens of scientific organizations throughout the USSR with the aim of quickly transmitting information. In 1991, they mastered the teleconferencing format and it became possible to send messages by email. On September 19, 1991, the .su domain zone was approved, encompassing all Internet resources of the Soviet Union. In 1993, the first Russian Internet provider “Demos On-Line” appeared. It was his employees who created the website, which we will describe below.

The very first domain in Russia had the address www.ru and was called Russia on the net. It was a simple search engine that offered to enter searches using keywords through the search bar. The site itself existed from 1994 to 2002. The domain was then put up for sale. Today its value is 20.6 million rubles. However, you can find a working analogue of this site on the Internet. It is available at www.1-9-9-4.ru.

On November 1, 1994, the Lib.ru website, the first Russian online library, was opened. Users enthusiastically digitized books and made them public. Later, print publications also started registering their domains. For example, in 1995 the website of the teacher’s newspaper (ug.ru) appeared, on which electronic versions of weekly issues were posted.

In the same year, the first entertainment sites began to appear. The most successful of them is Anekdot.ru, which collected thousands of jokes of different genres, as well as funny stories from real life. Moreover, they were published without censorship. The editors only made sure there were no repeats. In the first years this site was the most popular in RuNet. But in 1998, against the backdrop of the financial crisis, this title was transferred to RBC (RosBusinessConsulting). Initially, it reported data on stock prices, and after a while it turned into a full-fledged media channel.

One of the first commercial websites was launched by 1C. This happened on November 12, 1996. It was possible to order domestic and foreign software on it. In the same year, a Russian online store was opened. It was called “Symbol” and specialized in paper books.

In 1996, many Russian institutes and universities were connected to the Internet. For the most important of them, special lines were organized, others had to purchase special cards and use telephone communications with a maximum speed of 56 kilobits per second. As a result, students and teachers began to actively explore the Internet.

The website www.ru could be used to obtain the necessary information, but its functions were noticeably limited. Rambler turned out to be the first full-fledged Russian search engine. It appeared on November 26, 1996. The site quickly became popular and turned into a media portal. Soon he started to have competitors. While Aport went unnoticed by a wide audience, Yandex, released in 1997, became the most popular search engine in Russia within a few years. He still retains this title.

The first attempt to organize a site with the possibility of free exchange of emails was made in 1997. The portal was available on pochta.ru. However, due to numerous bugs and failures, it soon had to be closed. A similar fate befell the Extranet service. The first successful website with email was Mail.ru. It opened on November 1, 1998 and is still in operation.

Nowadays, many residents of our country shop online more often than they go to the store. But this was not always the case. The first full-fledged marketplace was Ozon. It was opened in 1998. And in 2000, the electronic trading platform Yandex Market appeared. It is also worth mentioning the Avito website, which allows you to purchase goods from ordinary users since 2007.

The prototypes of social networks appeared in the 1990s. For example, in December 1996, the chat servers “Crib” were opened. E-Xecutive, launched in 2001, turned out to be a fully-fledged social network. However, it focused on communication between professionals in different fields, so it did not gain much popularity.

In March 2006, Odnoklassniki was published, and in October of the same year VKontakte was published. Today they remain the most popular social networks in Russia.

Gradually, the Internet environment developed its own jargon. It contains well-known words in a slightly distorted form (“kote”, “onatole”, “approve”, “handsome”, “beer”, “afftar”), other meanings of well-known expressions (“accordion”, “burn” , “ hang” “) and completely new words (“puff-puff”, “+100500”, “google”, “lamer”, “link”, “offtopic”). Users of the Upyachka website played an important role in the spread of Internet jargon. In particular, they actively wrote jargon phrases that were incomprehensible to other users on various portals.

This term appeared in the 90s. As you know, any protection can be hacked, and that is what experienced but dishonest programmers tried to take advantage of. So on February 24, 1998, hacker Vladimir Levin was arrested when he tried to withdraw about ten million dollars from his account. The man stole this, for that time, astronomical amount from the accounts of depositors at an American bank.

The first domestic gaming site appeared in 1995. It turned out to be Games.СNews.Ru. Soon, many magazines specializing in video games got their own Internet portals. So, in 1996, the publisher Gameland, known for such print publications as “Land of Games”, “Official PlayStation Russia”, “PC Games”, “Hacker” and “Iron”, opened its website. Later we saw separate gaming sites that were not linked to magazines. And in 2011, VGTimes was opened, on whose pages you are reading this article.

What events related to Runet do you remember? We’re waiting for your thoughts in the comments!