Mail.ru, Russia’s leading Internet outfit, has launched My.com in the US.
Mail.ru is owned by (Russian) billionaire Alisher Usmanov, and My.com is his company’s first foray into the US market. With My.com, the company is offering mail, chat and games to start, with an image editor called myCamera to follow.
The mail service is called myMail, while the chat service, which is called myChat, offers mobile text, voice and video messaging. The free mobile games service is called myGames and already offers games like Jungle Heat, Poker Arena, and Lucky Fields.
My.com has a sales office somewhere in Silicon Valley, but the development work will be done in Moscow, Russia. There is no indication that the service offers users any privacy option, so this likely one of those services you’ll have to evaluate very carefully, if privacy is very important to you. Since My.com is a US service, the question is, where is the data center, in the US or somewhere in Russia? In other words, is this one of those services where a US govt agency be able access users’ data just by presenting a form letter?
