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Russian investment firm DST merges email and online game companies

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 1 min

dstDigital Sky Technologies, the Russian investment group that invested in Facebook this year, has merged an email portal with an online game developer to try to create an Internet powerhouse.

Moscow-based DST said today that it merged its communication portal, Mail.ru, the biggest provider of free email services for Russian-speaking countries, with Russian online game firm Astrum Online, which operates 30 online games.

DST created Astrum Online in 2007 by merging four game developers into one company. The strategy is to combine communications, information and entertainment in a single Internet company, said Yuri Milner, chief executive of DST. After the deal, Mail.ru will become the full owner of Astrum Online. It sounds a lot like AOL to me.

Dmitry Grishin, head of Mail.ru, will be president and CEO of the combined company, while Igor Matsanyuk and Vladimir Nikolskiy will become First Vice President and Vice President, respectively.

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Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.