Google buys russian ad network ZAO Begun for $140 mio

[Rumbas]

According to theRegister, Google has just closed a deal where Google is buying the ad server part of popular search engine Rambler for $140M. After the deal is clear, Rambler will begin serving Google Adsense/adwords to Beguns 40,000 advertisers and 143,000 Russian language sites.

"This agreement illustrates our commitment to investing in Russia, where online advertising is currently experiencing rapid growth," read a canned Mohammad Gawdat, Google's managing director for emerging markets. "We are very excited about the opportunity to deliver more relevant search and ads to users and provide advertisers and publishers with better advertising technology to help them succeed in their own businesses."

TheRegister [theregister.co.uk]

UPDATE:
Techcrunch [techcrunch.com] has the story from the 18th also, with a little more info. Among other things that The contextual advertising market in Russia is worth $225 million [uk.techcrunch.com]

[edited by: Rumbas at 12:19 pm (utc) on July 21, 2008]