Suing for $3 billion is an almost insane act.  Combine it with a corporate name that translates to "The Age of Aquarius," and you’ve got something that should cause a judge to hurt himself laughing.  Yet since everything’s taking place in Russia, it seems possible that a new lawsuit will cause problems for Google.

Like a hockey player who wasn’t expecting a body check, Google’s gotten an unpleasant surprise in the antitrust department.  Even as the company was focused on its deal with Yahoo, Russian authorities have stopped its acquisition of Begun.

Solid reports have indicated for several months that Yandex, the popular Russian search engine, would file for an IPO sometime this year.  Now it seems that international problems have made it delay things until 2009 instead.

Blame the global economy for starters.  Unsteady markets and rising inflation have caused investors to become nervous, making them less likely to sink money into anything without a long and solid track record.  Yandex, which was founded in 1997 and became profitable in 2002, might not be embraced.

Deteriorating relations between the U.S. and Russia have a few people worrying about an exchange of missiles.  Executives of American Internet companies may also be concerned about missed business opportunities, as Russia has been declared home of Europe’s fastest-growing Internet population.

People noticed over the past couple of days that street maps of recently-froggy nation of Georgia were missing from Google Maps. This sparked subsequent (invented) speculation that Google had removed data about Georgia in the wake of the Russian retaliatory invasion.

After government servers were allegedly knocked offline by Russian cyber attackers, the Georgian government seems to have revived its Web presence on Blogger, Google’s free blogging service.

The poor old Dow went down almost 225 points today, and we expect that some tears are being shed within certain sectors of the American economy.  A new report indicates that Russian advertisers are operating on the opposite end of the spectrum, however, with big year-over-year growth taking place.

Russian contextual ad network Begun, purchased by Google from Rambler Media, saw a quick uptick in its business through the start of 2008.

Context ads firm ZAO Begun joined Google after the search advertising company purchased it from parent firm Rambler Media for $140 million.

A Russian blogger who referred to local police as "scum" in a post received a suspended jail sentence on Monday for extremism, leading other bloggers to express concern over online free speech.

Savva Terentiev, a 28-year-old musician from Syktyvkar, 940 miles north of Moscow, wrote a post that suggested the police should be dealt with by burning officers two times a day in a town square.

The vast expanses of Russia may be as potentially rich in online ad revenue as they are in oil and minerals, and Google hopes to be the next firm to mine that resource.

Thanks to matters of both proximity and size, discussions concerning overseas search tend to focus on the UK and China.  Russia may soon enter more conversations, though, as at least one expert feels its online ad market is ready to explode.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev says Russia needs to be assigned an Internet domain name in the Cyrillic script in an effort to promote Russian as an international language.

The Kremlin is worried that Russian, once the main language in the Soviet Union is being used less because of local languages and the influence of English.

Medvedev said that 300 million people worldwide used Russian media and that a Cyrillic domain name would play an important role in raising the importance of Russian as a language.

The average Russian Internet user went online 13 days in February, spent an average of 82 minutes per day online, and viewed 2,322 pages of content during the month according to comScore World Metrix.

Russian language search engine Yandex reached 62 percent of the Russian online audience, making it the leading Web property in February, followed by Mail.Ru sites (51% reach), Rambler Media (49 percent reach), AOL (42 percent reach) and Google Sites (41% reach).

Russian president-elect Dmitry Medvedev said his country should take a balanced approach when it comes to regulating the Internet.

Critics charge that Russian authorities are trying to impose stricter regulations of the Internet, a popular place for political debate within the country, where the mainstream media kowtows to the Kremlin.

Speaking at a forum about the Internet Medvedev acknowledged what he called "the delicate question of the relationship between freedom of speech and responsibility," on the Web.

Say what you want about censorship in Russia; the man who will likely become the country’s next president publicly recognized that, at least in theory, the Internet has made the spread of information much freer.

We know that these 2007 figures are coming a little late, but they’re nonetheless impressive: online advertising in Russia roughly doubled from its 2006 standing, reaching $369 million.

What is the Internet population of Russia? It depends on if you believe comScore World Metrix who says that in September 2007 Russian Internet penetration was 12 percent with 14 million users or eMarketer who predicts Russia will have more than 40 million Internet user by the end of the year.

A Web site in the southern Russian region of Ingushetia blamed local authorities on Thursday of attempting to shut it down after it organized protests and posted details of kidnaps and murders.

Ingushetiya.ru was one of the only sources of information that was critical of authorities from the mostly Muslim region bordering Chechnya. The site promoted and helped organize a protest Saturday where demonstrators carrying gasoline bombs clashed with police and burned a pro-government newspaper office.

He may claim to not have a car, but Dmitry Medvedev, Vladimir Putin’s would-be successor, now has a website.  And the website has lots of pictures.

An Estonian court has fined a man tied to hacking official Web sites during last year’s riots over the moving of a Soviet war memorial.

The court of Harju district, whose jurisdiction includes the capital Tallinn, said it had fined the 20-year-old 17,500 kroons ($1,635) for bringing down the server Web site of the ruling- coalition- leading Reform Party.