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Yandex invested dozens of thousands dollars in a US/Ukrainian Internet startup Refine.io. Its office is in California, USA, and the development team is in Ukraine, informed Paudis. Refine.io is a mobile application creation service aimed at creation of prototypes of iOS applications using convenient drag-n-drop constructor.

Internet giant will pay $100 million-plus for visual search provider, according to reports. Google Inc. is on the verge of acquiring Like.com, a search engine that allows consumers to search for products using images, reported the TechCrunch blog Sunday. The Internet giant is "in the final stages of acquiring Like.com...for something north of $100 million," the technology news blog said, citing multiple unnamed sources. Like.com chief executive Munjal Shah couldn't be reached for comment, it said. The website uses image search technology to allow users to "search visually by seeing images that are similar to other images," TechCrunch said. According to Like.com's website, the search engine focuses on "soft goods" such as fashion apparel and accessories, allowing shoppers to use both image and text queries to look for products. Google had in 2005 tried to acquire Like.com's predecessor, Riya.com, before walking away from a possible deal, TechCrunch reported, adding that Like.com uses core technology that was developed by Riya, which was focused on facial recognition. The U.S.-based company has shown interest in developing visual search technology, TechCrunch said. Google provides a similar feature on its own search engine, and in December launched a visual search application for mobile phones. In April, Google bought U.K.-based startup Plink, which develops mobile visual search applications, for an undisclosed sum.

The Ukraine's State Committee on Statistics has released the financial results of communications field for January-November, 2009. So, revenues from telecommunications services in Ukraine for 11 months amounted to 42, 074 billion UAH or 3,4% less, compared to the same period in 2008. The decline in revenues was due to decrease from mobile services (4%), postal services (by 8,2%), urban (by 13,9%) and long-distance telephone communications (19,3%). While total income from the Internet in Ukraine for 11 months of 2009 increased by 39,4% (comparing with January-November 2008) or to 2,58 billion UAH. In particular, revenues from providing services to the individual users amounted to 1, 4 billion UAH (or 70,8% higher than in January-November 2008). The Internet’s share in the total revenues pie has reached to 6%. Revenues from cable TV for 11 months of 2009 amounted to 1,164 billion UAH (or compared with January-November 2008, by 28,6%). The cable TV share in the total revenues pack equalled to 2,9%. Revenues from mobile communication in Ukraine decreased by 4% in January-November 2009 and amounted to 25. 8 billion UAH. In particular, revenues from providing mobile services to the individuals in January-November decreased by 17,8%, compared to the same period in 2008 (or to 8.7 bln UAH. The mobile share in total revenues amounted to 60,8%.

According to Yandex.ru, Russian search engine company, the Ukrainian users have more than 420 000 blogs and about 20 000 communities. That is 70% more than 6 months earlier and 3.5 times more than 1.5 years ago. There are 15% blogs and 13% communities may be considered as active ones. About 80% of all Ukrainian blogs (both active and non-active) are hosted on 3 blog hostings: LiveJournal.com, Blogs.Mail.ru and LiveInternet.ru. Four Ukrainian blog hostings (Dnevnik.Bigmir.net, Blog.I.ua, Blog.Meta.ua and Blox.ua) host about 15 Ukrainian blogs. Twitter.com is growing rapidly (9 times)in Ukraine for the last 6 months having reached about 5 000 accounts with 90% of active ones. Great majority of personal blogs (73%) and communities (95%) have been registered in 8 Ukrainian cities with Kiev, Odessa and Kharkov at top of the list. An average statistical Ukrainian blogger is a 22 year-old girl living in Kiev. She has 19 friends (9 mutual ones) and participates in 13 communities. Her blog is about 1.5 year-old and has 21 subscribers. Above 75% of Ukrainian bloggers are youngsters (15 - 29 y.o.). Every week day the Ukrainian bloggers add about 20 000 posts and approximately 60 000 comments.

RGB Networks, the leader in network video processing, today announced that Volia, a leading Ukrainian telecom provider, has selected RGB’s Broadcast Network Processor (BNP) to optimise its video services to its 400,000 strong subscriber base.