Seznam.cz
 | |
| Company type | Joint stock company |
|---|---|
| Industry | Internet, Computer software |
| Founder | Ivo Lukačovič |
| Headquarters | , |
Area served | Czech Republic, Slovak Republic |
Key people | Pavel Zima (CEO) Vlastimil Pečínka (R&D director) |
| Revenue |  1,4 billion CZK (2008) |
| 625 million CZK (2008) | |
1,355,000,000 Czech koruna (2020)  | |
| Total assets | 1,976,843,000 Czech koruna (2019) |
Number of employees | Over 600 (2008) |
| Website | Seznam.cz |
Seznam.cz (or just Seznam, which means list in English) is the most visited web portal in the Czech Republic. Founded in 1996 by Ivo Lukačovič in Prague as the fist web portal in the Czech Republic. In 2008 Seznam reached a turnover of around 1.7 billion CZK. Seznam started with a search engine and an internet version of yellow pages. Today, Seznam runs more than 15 different web services and associated brands. Seznam had more than 4 million unique visitors per month at the end of 2008. Among the most popular services, according to NetMonitor, are Seznam homepage, Seznam Email, Seznam Search and Seznam yellow pages.
In the Czech market, Seznam.cz was, until 2008, in competition with portals Centrum.cz and Atlas.cz. These portals, despite merging in 2008, no longer appear likely to overcome Seznam in the near future. Seznam's biggest competitor now appears to be global Google, especially in the area of full-text search.
Seznam is the most often displayed page in the Czech Republic, in contrast to the rest of the EU where Google dominates. In the Czech Republic Google is fifth. As of May 2008, Seznam is dominant internet search engine in the Czech Republic (59.89%) with Google in second place (31.61%).
Seznam, like four other companies in the world, is still the number one search engine in its region. Other such search engines are Baidu (China), Naver (South Korea), Yahoo Japan (Japan) and Yandex (Russia).
Seznam uses a Czech rhyme Seznam - najdu tam, co neznám (Seznam, I find there, what I don't know).
History
Seznam, founded by Ivo Lukačovič, began as the first internet yellow pages and search engine in the Czech Republic in 1996. Ivo started his business with 50,000 CZK he had saved up. In 1998, Seznam added email to its portfolio, with email accounts running on the @seznam.cz domain. Since than, more brands and services have come on-line. Since 2001, Seznam has included financial, social and political news, TV programs, weather forecasts, dictionaries, maps and community services.
In 2000, Spray International, a Swedish web portal company, invested in Seznam. At that time Seznam become a joint stock company. Until 2000, Ivo Lukačovič was self-employed and Seznam was his own sole business. With the investment, it is estimated that Spray International acquired around 30% of Seznam's shares. Exact numbers are not known. Ivo Lukačovič and Seznam officials have never released any details about the transaction. What has ben confirmed though is that Ivo Lukačovič retained at least 70% of Seznam's stocks after the investment.
Spray entered Seznam with the intention to making an IPO. However, Spray never reached that goal. After the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, Spray abandoned the idea of an IPO. There are rumors about Spray defaulting on its obligations to Ivo Lukačovič in not making an IPO. In 2003, Ivo Lukačovič increased the base capital of Seznam without Spray and became 70% owner of Seznam. Since 2003, Ivo Lukačovič has remained the controlling shareholder of Seznam.
In 2005, Seznam replaced its search engine technology with its own. Until 2003 Seznam had been using a fulltext engine from Czech company Jyxo. In 2005, Seznam acquired the Czech firm ATC which was, amongst other things, running the email server Email.cz. Email services, Email.cz, and Seznam.cz have now merged.
In 2006, Seznam moved its headquarters from Prague Košíře to a more prominent location at Prague Anděl. That year, Ivo Lukačovič gave up day to day business direction of Seznam and Pavel Zima became CEO. In the Fall of 2006, Seznam acquired all email users from another web portal "Czech On Line", with their domain @post.cz.
In 2007, Seznam bought 50% of Global Inspiration, a Czech company running a video portal Stream.cz, similar to global YouTube. Lycos Europe (a subsequent incarnation of Spray International) sold its 30% share in Seznam to Tiger Holding and Miura International. Lycos received more that 1.7 billion CZK from this transaction.
In 2008, the Czech media reported on alleged meetings between Seznam and Goldman Sachs representatives to find a buyer for Seznam. Ivo Lukačovič and Seznam representatives denied this. Such speculation ended with the start of financial crisis in Europe in late 2008.
Assessment
Seznam uses its own ranking scale for web pages. It is a similar to PageRank with a range from 0 to 100.
Seznam vs. Google
Because Seznam was for many years the only search engine using the Czech alphabet, it became the leader in the local search engine market. Google has now improved its Czech language support and now provides search capability similar to that of Seznam.