Russia's Mail.Ru group is entering the fiercely competitive U.S. Internet market with its own My.com. The new project offers U.S. consumers communication and entertainment apps for Android and iOS smartphones.
Mail.Ru Group, a leading Internet company in the high-growth Russian-speaking Internet market, has made its debut in the U.S. with its own startup, My.com. The Russian Internet company is known for developing products for advertising. My.com offers communication and entertainment apps for Android and iOS smartphones. The new website currently hosts three mobile products; myMail, myChat, myGames, and it has myCamera in the pipeline.
"I'm happy to introduce our new products to the competitive U.S. Internet market," Dmitry Grishin, co-founder and CEO of Mail.Ru Group, said in a press release. "Russian developers tend to have outstanding backgrounds in mathematics, physics and engineering, which have propelled Russian companies to the forefront of the domestic Internet market. Now we will use all the skills and experience we've earned to enter the U.S. market."
Mail.Ru Group claims to be the world's largest email platform in the world, but the company has not introduced a standalone email service for the U.S. Instead, it offers myMail, a mobile application for iOS and Android that lets users manage multiple email accounts from various email services such as Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL and any IMAP/POP3 service. The email client offers custom alerts, which would be helpful in avoiding alerts during nighttime.
Mail.Ru also introduced myChat and like the name suggests, it helps U.S. consumers to connect with friends and family via a free messaging platform and also supports video calls. Finally, the myGames app for iOS and Android brings a string of free mobile games including Jungle Heat, Lucky Fields, and Poker Arena. For those who are fans of action games, Mail.Ru has "Evolution," an action sci-fi adventure game that is yet to be released.
Mail.Ru, which has more than 100 million Russian-speaking consumers, has set up an office in Mountain View, California, to operate its My.com startup. The company poses a direct challenge to other services such as Mailbox, WhatsApp, Viber, and others.
U.S. smartphone users can download the free apps, myMail, myChat, and myGames, from iTunes and Google Play Store.
