Seznam.cz
Encyclopedia
Seznam.cz is the most visited web portal
Web portal
A web portal or links page is a web site that functions as a point of access to information in the World Wide Web. A portal presents information from diverse sources in a unified way....

 and search engine
Search engine
A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information...

 in the Czech Republic
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....

. Founded in 1996 by Ivo Lukačovič
Ivo Lukacovic
Ivo Lukačovič is a visionary and founder, chairman and of Seznam.cz, the largest and most-visited search engine in the Czech Republic.- Biography :...

 in Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

 as the fist web portal in the Czech Republic. In 2008 Seznam reached a turnover of around 1.7 billion CZK. Seznam started with a search engine
Search engine
A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information...

 and an internet version of yellow pages
Yellow Pages
Yellow Pages refers to a telephone directory of businesses, organized by category, rather than alphabetically by business name and in which advertising is sold. As the name suggests, such directories were originally printed on yellow paper, as opposed to white pages for non-commercial listings...

. Today, Seznam runs more than 15 different web services and associated brands. Seznam had more than 4 million exclusive visitors per month at the end of 2008. Among the most popular services, according to NetMonitor, are Seznam homepage, Seznam Email, Seznam Search and Seznam yellow pages.

In the Czech market, Seznam.cz was until 2008 in competition with the portals Centrum.cz and Atlas.cz. These two portals, despite merging in 2008, no longer appear likely to overcome Seznam in the near future. Seznam's biggest competitor now appears to be global Google
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

, especially in the area of full-text search.

Seznam is the most often displayed page in the Czech Republic, in contrast to the rest of the EU where Google dominates. In the Czech Republic Google is fifth. As of May 2008, Seznam is the dominant internet search engine in the Czech Republic (59.89%) with Google in second place (31.61%).

Seznam, like four other companies in the world, is still the number one search engine in its region. Other such search engines are Baidu
Baidu
Baidu, Inc. , simply known as Baidu and incorporated on January 18, 2000, is a Chinese web services company headquartered in the Baidu Campus in Haidian District, Beijing, People's Republic of China....

 (China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

), Naver (South Korea
South Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...

), Yahoo Japan (Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

) and Yandex
Yandex
Yandex is a Russian IT company which operates the largest search engine in Russia and develops a number of Internet-based services and products. Yandex is ranked as 5-th world largest search engine...

 (Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

).

Since 2011, Seznam has used as its slogan a Czech rhyme Seznam - najdu tam, co hledám (Seznam - I find there, what I search for). Prior to this its slogan was Seznam - najdu tam, co neznám (Seznam - I find there, what I don't know).

History

Founded by Ivo Lukačovič
Ivo Lukacovic
Ivo Lukačovič is a visionary and founder, chairman and of Seznam.cz, the largest and most-visited search engine in the Czech Republic.- Biography :...

 in 1996, Seznam began as the first internet yellow pages
Yellow Pages
Yellow Pages refers to a telephone directory of businesses, organized by category, rather than alphabetically by business name and in which advertising is sold. As the name suggests, such directories were originally printed on yellow paper, as opposed to white pages for non-commercial listings...

 and search engine
Search engine
A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information...

 in the Czech Republic
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....

. Ivo started his business with 50,000 CZK he had saved up. In 1998, Seznam added email to its portfolio, with email accounts running on the @seznam.cz domain. Since then, more brands and services have come on-line. Since 2001, Seznam has included financial, social and political news, TV programs, weather forecasts, dictionaries, maps and community services.

In 2000, Spray International, a Swedish
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 web portal company, invested in Seznam. At that time Seznam became a joint stock company
Joint stock company
A joint-stock company is a type of corporation or partnership involving two or more individuals that own shares of stock in the company...

. Until 2000, Ivo Lukačovič was self-employed and Seznam was his own sole business. With the investment, it is estimated that Spray International acquired around 30% share of Seznam. Exact numbers are not known, as Lukačovič and Seznam officials have never released any details about the transaction. What has been confirmed, though, is that Ivo Lukačovič retained at least 70% of Seznam stock after the investment.

Spray acquired a stake in Seznam with the intention of making an IPO; however, Spray never reached that goal. After the dot-com bubble
Dot-com bubble
The dot-com bubble was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2000 during which stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more...

 burst in 2000, Spray abandoned the idea. There are rumors about Spray defaulting on its obligations to Ivo Lukačovič by not making an IPO. In 2003, Ivo Lukačovič increased the base capital of Seznam without Spray and became 70% owner of Seznam. Since 2003, Ivo Lukačovič has remained the controlling shareholder of Seznam.

Until 2003, Seznam had been using a fulltext engine from the Czech company Jyxo; however, in 2005, Seznam replaced that search engine with its own technology. Also in 2005, Seznam acquired the Czech firm ATC which was, among other ventures, running the email server Email.cz. Email services Email.cz and Seznam.cz have now merged.

In 2006, Seznam moved its headquarters from Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

 Košíře
Košíre
Košíře is a part of a municipal area Prague 5. It is situated in a valley of Motol brook between the city quarters Smíchov and Motol. Košíře was an autonomous city during 1896-1921.- History :...

 to a more prominent location in the Prague Anděl
Andel (neighborhood)
Anděl is a busy crossing and its immediate neighbourhood in Prague 5's central quarter of Smíchov. The name means angel in the Czech language and originates from the 19th century U zlatého anděla pub originally named after an angel statue in front of it...

. That year, Ivo Lukačovič gave up the day-to-day business direction of Seznam, and Pavel Zima became CEO. In the Fall of 2006, Seznam acquired all email users from another web portal, "Czech On Line", with the domain @post.cz.

Seznam bought 50% of Global Inspiration, a Czech company running a video portal Stream.cz, similar to the global YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....

 in 2007. Lycos Europe
Lycos Europe
Lycos Europe was a pan-European network of websites, offering services including communication tools, online communities, web search, e-commerce, web hosting, homepage building and Internet access. It was an independent corporation, sharing no corporate structure with Lycos, Inc...

 (a subsequent incarnation of Spray International) sold its 30% share in Seznam to Tiger Holding
Tiger Management
Tiger Management Corp., also known as "The Tiger Fund," was a hedge fund founded by Julian Robertson. The fund began investing in 1980 and was closed in March 2000.-History:...

 and Miura International. Lycos received more than 1.7 billion CZK from this transaction.

In 2008, the Czech media reported on alleged meetings between Seznam and Goldman Sachs
Goldman Sachs
The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. is an American multinational bulge bracket investment banking and securities firm that engages in global investment banking, securities, investment management, and other financial services primarily with institutional clients...

 representatives to find a buyer for Seznam. Ivo Lukačovič and Seznam representatives denied this. Such speculation ended with the start of the financial crisis in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

 in late 2008.

Assessment

Seznam uses its own ranking scale for web pages, called S-Rank. It is a similar to PageRank
PageRank
PageRank is a link analysis algorithm, named after Larry Page and used by the Google Internet search engine, that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of "measuring" its relative importance within the set...

with a range from 0 to 10.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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