Czech search engine Seznam on the block for $1 billion or more?

Written on August 16, 2008 – 11:30 am
Robin Wauters, Next web enthusiast & Plugg organizer

Ernst-Jan has already written a piece about how useful the Quintura corporate blog is for keeping up-to-date on the latest developments in Eastern Europe and Russia. Now Yakov brings us this gem: apparently Czech search engine Seznam is talking to potential buyers about selling for a price exceeding $1 billion. Yes, that’s billion with a ‘b’ as in ‘big money’.

Google is cited as a potential acquirer, along with private equity firms Warburg Pincus, owner of Czech portal Centrum, and Macquarie Capital Alliance Group, owner of Czech yellow pages publisher Mediatel.

Seznam had 62% share of the Czech search market vs. Google’s 29% share. The site reported 4.4 million unique users in May 2008, and is estimating bringing in revenues of approx. $90 million this year, up 40% from 2007. The company was previously valued at $300 million after two private equity firms bought out Lycos Europe’s 30% stake for $91 million. The majority of shares is still in the hands of founder Ivo Lukačovič.

There seems to be a huge consolidation wave in the Czech internet landscape (see Yakov’s post for more on that), but if this deal goes through, it would make it one of the largest in the history of the Eastern European web scene alltogether.

I hope you like that post!

The Next Web Blog covers start-up news from all over the world (not just the Valley), exciting new technologies and inspiring entrepreneurs. If you're new here, you may want to read our 'About' page and subscribe to our RSS feed.

Do you have a start-up that we should write about? Contact us! Thanks for visiting and hope you come back again!

acquisition, czech republic, google, search, search engine, Seznam

About the author: Robin Wauters is a Belgium-based social media consultant, startup advisor, blogger, entrepreneur, Twitter fanatic, conference organizer and allround web addict. Between trying out just about every new web application that gets in his sight, he advises local startups like ContactOffice, Oxynade and Yuntaa. And when he's not busy trying to keep tabs with what's going on in the virtualization & cloud computing industry as managing editor of Virtualization.com, he's probably working on the organization of Plugg, an annual celebration of European web entrepreneurship.

About a month ago we reported that the Russian search engines were on their way to enter the regions of world's largest search engines, comfortably next to Google. The CEO of visual search engine Quintura...

Search Update: Yahoo, Twingly & Quintura

"Yahoo hasn't given up on search yet"Yahoo, maybe in an effort to distract us from the massive layoffs coming up next week, has just announced that they have updated their crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms....

Russian mining and publishing billionaire goes after a stake in Yandex

There's a new loner in the wild west of Russian search engine land, where millions of dollars are spent and Google is just small potatoes. Alisher Usmanov is his name. This man is the founder...

13 comments/trackbacks to “Czech search engine Seznam on the block for $1 billion or more?”

Aug 18, 2008: Google Won't Let Search Startups Grow Too Large
[...] search engine, Seznam is on the block for $1 billion, according to reports, and Google may be in the hunt for that country’s most popular search engine. And while it [...]
Aug 18, 2008: Google Won’t Let Search Startups Grow Too Large »TechAddress
[...] search engine, Seznam is on the block for $1 billion, according to reports, and Google may be in the hunt for that country’s most popular search engine. And while it [...]
Aug 18, 2008: Track What Obama, McCain, and Political Journos are Sharing on Google Reader »TechAddress
[...] search engine, Seznam is on the block for $1 billion, according to reports, and Google may be in the hunt for that country’s most popular search engine. And while it [...]
Aug 18, 2008: Facebook Narrows the Traffic Gap on MySpace in the US »TechAddress
[...] search engine, Seznam is on the block for $1 billion, according to reports, and Google may be in the hunt for that country’s most popular search engine. And while it [...]
Aug 24, 2008: מדוע וואלה הצ'כית שווה פי 14 מוואלה הישראלית - TheMarker Cafe
[...] מדי חודש. באורח מפתיע, ל-Seznam יש פחות גולשים מוואלה - 4.4 מיליון במאי [...]

By boris on Aug 16, 2008

I can’t imagine google buying another search engine. I can imagine them buying other companies, but search???

[Reply]
By Tonda on Aug 16, 2008

Ah, it’s good to see article about Czech internet here (yes, I am Czech).
We don’t know, how it is about selling Seznam but these are just speculations. Ivo Lukačovič said that in the end of the year, he still will be owner of Seznam. So maybe he will just sell some stocks.
I know you probably think, that Seznam sucks in compare with Google but it’s not true. Seznam is really good (local) search engine and it has also many other great projects. I would be very upset if some company like Google just buys it a forward it’s users to their site.

[Reply]
By Eduard Blacquière on Aug 16, 2008

I think this gives a clear indication on what the value of search is. I also think it’s a good thing that some search markets are NOT dominated by Google.

[Reply]
By mike on Aug 18, 2008

ohh…very crazy,it is real?i can’t believe it..

[Reply]
By Domenista on Aug 19, 2008

I think one billion is too much.

Seznam is an interesting web directory, but as search engine it has not future…

[Reply]
By Tonda on August 19th, 2008:
I think you overslept last few years. :)

[Reply]
By Robin Wauters on Aug 19, 2008

To be honest, I don’t think Google is a serious contender in this story, seems more likely the private equity groups are steering towards consolidation.

[Reply]
By john on Aug 19, 2008

i also think that google not serious in this story..unbelievable if google get serious

[Reply]

The Next Web