The company DEPO Computers, which is part of the IBS group of system integration companies, has acquired a nearly 100% stake in Softkey, the flagship online distributor of software in the Russian segment of the Internet. The company has no intention of renaming Softkey, and its current director Felix Muchnik will continue in his position. The amount of the deal has not been disclosed, but sources of Webplanet claim it could be up to $500,000. Despite the estimated 2006 sales of $11 million, the company is still not making a profit. But according to other estimates, Softkey may be making anywhere between zero and $12 million. The deal is primarily expected to increase the total value of Softkey assets. Next year Felix Muchnik plans to double the company's sales yet again.

The Russian domain name registrar Ru-Center has published a forecast according to which the number of domain names in the top level domain .RU will exceed one million. A 700-thousandth domain name was registered recently, while the .RU domain exceeded the threshold of 500 thousand domain names on April 7, 2006. Yet compared to other countries Russia is not doing all that well. In terms of the number of registered domains Russia is way behind Germany with 10 million domain names and Great Britain with 5 million. Still Russia is ahead of France, which currently has only 500,000 registered domain names.