Business Watch
The leaders of the CSTO (the Collective Security Treaty Organization) have set the rules on the way military bases of non-member states should be stationed on their territories. From now on, it will only be possible with the official permission of all the CSTO member states. This was the main outcome of the CSTO Council’s session which, traditionally, was held in Moscow.The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) comprises Armenia Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Although during their meeting in Moscow the CSTO leaders have not agreed on all the aspects of their security cooperation they have managed to agree on one of the key issues namely the rules of the stationing of third countries’ military bases on the territory of CSTO states.
The biggest Russian search engine company has acquired SPB Software, an international developer of software for mobile devices and carriers. According to the daily Vedomosti, Yandex has paid around $38 million for the acquisition of the company. Yandexis a developer of software for mobile devices and carriers, having a 64% market share in Russia, ranking as the 5th largest search engine worldwide with more than 3 billion searches, or 1.7% of global search as of last September. It attracts more than 56 million users from all over the world. Its web site is also present in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Turkey. Another company, Yandex Labs, is a wholly owned division of Yandex that is located in the San Francisco Bay Area. The closest competitors to Yandex in the Russian market are Google, Mail.ru and Rambler. Although services like Google and Yahoo! are also used by Russian users and have Russian-language interfaces, Google has about 21.9% of search engine generated traffic.
Manufacturing companies in Brazil, Russia, India andChina (BRIC) that choose to use illegal software steal more than $1.6 billion (U.S.) from their in-market competitors that opt to play fair by using genuine software.
Microsoft Corp. today released the findings of a first-of-its-kind study that tackles the financial impact using illegal software has on the competitive landscape within developing countries. In support of Play Fair Day, a global initiative to emphasize the importance of using legitimate software, this Microsoft-commissioned study quantifies the anticompetitive harm software piracy inflicts on businesses that play fair.
Freelancer.com, the world’s largest outsourcing marketplace, today announced that the site has passed $100 million in user earnings. Freelancer.com CEO Matt Barrie says the figure proves that building a global team on a shoestring budget for any entrepreneur or small business is now a realistic, mainstream concept. “More individuals and businesses are discovering exactly how far they can extend their competitive advantage using Freelancer.com," said Barrie.