Russia’s Kremlin-backed search engine
could soon close after capturing less than one percent of the
country’s online market.
Launched in early 2014, the Sputnik
search engine prioritized government sources for Russian internet
searches. The project, which initially cost some $20 million dollars,
also hoped to see Russia’s state media harness the power of larger
news aggregators such as Yandex and Google, the Vedomosti newspaper
reported Friday.
But huge losses and low user
numbers could soon force the company to focus on new projects or even
close for good, several sources close to the company told Vedomosti.
Sputnik’s revenues amounted to 136.6
million rubles in 2014, leaving losses of some 150.5 million rubles,
according to data from SPARK-Interfax. The company has been unable to
capture even 1 percent of the Russian search market, referring just
100,823 users on to other sites in April 2016.
The statistics leave the company
trailing behind regional leaders such as Yandex (with 54 percent of
the market share), and Google (with 40.8 percent.)
