What is runet?

It would seem that it is simpler: the word consists of two parts RU and NO, that is - it's a Russian network, that is, the Russian Internet. However, someone looks at this word more widely, and someone - already.

For some runet - a site in Russian, located on any domain. For other runets, these are servers located on the domains of the post-Soviet space (ru, su, rf, ua, by, kz, etc.) Russian state structures equate runets to the Russian part of the worldwide Internet network. Other experts believe that runet - it's only sites on ru.

On the one hand, the difference between these four definitions is quite clear. On the other hand, a person who is not very advanced in Internet technologies, it is difficult to catch the line between them. The easiest way is not to exclude a resource on some basis from Runet, consider the presence of Russian Cyrillic on the site as a sufficient condition for belonging to runet.

To date, the proportion of users who speak Russian, account for about 3% of all users of the global Internet. It is almost 60 million people and the ninth place in the world. The quantity of the same material in Russian is the second in the world and makes up almost six percent of the content of the global network. And with this it is impossible not to reckon. In the first place, of course, sites in English (almost 60%).

At the time of the birth of personal computers and the Internet, the transmission of information was possible only in Latin letters. Because of the complexity of sending Cyrillic, Russian people had to correspond with each other in English. Then there was the encoding Windows-1251, and the Russian Internet began to develop, however, at the initial stage with a five-year lag from the world. Today, the runet is in step with the world's Internet, practically keeping up with it. Russian programmers are considered one of the best.

In 1996, the first Russian search engine Rambler, which exists to this day, was launched. Although now it is more known for its catalog top100 and postal service. In 1997 there was a search engine Yandex, which is by far the most popular search engine runet, outstripping even the world's search leader Google.

Service Mail.ru was born in 1998. In the same year in runet appeared the first electronic currency WebMoney, which continues to be one of the most popular means of electronic payments. At the turn of the century, Russian-speaking users got to the American hosting of LiveJournal blogs. In 2001, the Russian Wikipedia was born. The search company Google came to Russia only in 2006. In 2007, the LiveJournal blog service was purchased by a Russian company, customer service in the Cyrillic alphabet acquired a new round.

By 2010, more than a third of the Russian population already used the Internet. In 2010 there were sites on the domain of. In 2012, more than half of Russians use the Internet. And in 2013 the Russian language became the second in the world by popularity in the network, ahead of German.

What is runet? Sites in Russian, located on foreign servers - is runet? A site in the English language of a Russian company located on a server in Moscow is also runet? Yes. Although the answer to the second question, some experts may disagree.