4 ms·

Russia's Top Web Startups of 2011 Mostly Rip Off U.S.'s

7 points by FluidDjango 15y ago

shocks 15y ago
How can Cut The Rope be a "Russian Rip-off" of Angry Birds? They're completely different, unless we're counting the fact that they feel like solid and professionally developed games.
- Geee 15y ago
  This was such a stupid comparison and Angry Birds is from Finland too.
guard-of-terra 15y ago
Biglion screenshot is photoshopped. Anyone can confirm that by visiting http://biglion.ru/ http://biglion.ru/ and comparing it with the image in the article. It IS a groupon clone, but why lie?
- sologoub 15y ago
  Yeah, looks like hour-glass clock is not there and a few other minor things... bug all-in-all it's a clone with almost exact color scheme, identical call to action buttons on the actual offer. Being from Moscow originally (10 years ago), it saddens me that so much creative potential there is being channelled into crappy imitations. Main problem they have is that people with money most often don't get innovation and lack of confidence in "tomorrow" drives people to look for easiest ways to make a few $$$ now instead of creating sustainable and original business models.
  - guard-of-terra 15y ago
    Define crappy? Biglion has huuuge traffic (alexa #723 as we speak) and it's now arguably coupon service #1 in Russia. Moreover, the problems its customers might have with this site do not revolve around its design being similar to that of Groupon. The nature of the internet is that there is usually only one global winner. Compare worldwide search (Google is bigger than everybody else combined) with worldwide car makers (10+ big names of comparable size, local brands in many countries). That one global winner tends to be an US-based megacorp. Given that, a country has exactly two choices. First one is let those megagiants colonize the local market, harnessing all the profits and then maybe opening some local offices someday; second one is try to fend off the global number ones and develop own services controlling the same business model slots, understanding that these local players would not be very different from a global player (either by cloning like VKontakte or by converging like Yandex), and that the global megacorp would probably be overally more advanced (counterexample is south korea where local services run circles around clumsy google in the terms of tech). Doing the first way you submit all your market to US megacorps and then try to fit in some original, tiny but global, business niche (since all the big slots would already be taken). So I applaud that Russia could go the second way, for sure.
vectorpush 15y ago
More power to them, they are filling a need that is generally unserviced by an English speaking hegemony. Yeah, there are some rip offs, but imitation of popular brands is nothing new.
dimitar 15y ago
Don't all startups don't rip off from each other?

7 points by FluidDjango 15y ago

How can Cut The Rope be a "Russian Rip-off" of Angry Birds? They're completely different, unless we're counting the fact that they feel like solid and professionally developed games.

Geee 15y ago
This was such a stupid comparison and Angry Birds is from Finland too.

guard-of-terra 15y ago

Biglion screenshot is photoshopped. Anyone can confirm that by visiting http://biglion.ru/ http://biglion.ru/ and comparing it with the image in the article. It IS a groupon clone, but why lie?

sologoub 15y ago
Yeah, looks like hour-glass clock is not there and a few other minor things... bug all-in-all it's a clone with almost exact color scheme, identical call to action buttons on the actual offer. Being from Moscow originally (10 years ago), it saddens me that so much creative potential there is being channelled into crappy imitations. Main problem they have is that people with money most often don't get innovation and lack of confidence in "tomorrow" drives people to look for easiest ways to make a few $$$ now instead of creating sustainable and original business models.
- guard-of-terra 15y ago
  Define crappy? Biglion has huuuge traffic (alexa #723 as we speak) and it's now arguably coupon service #1 in Russia. Moreover, the problems its customers might have with this site do not revolve around its design being similar to that of Groupon. The nature of the internet is that there is usually only one global winner. Compare worldwide search (Google is bigger than everybody else combined) with worldwide car makers (10+ big names of comparable size, local brands in many countries). That one global winner tends to be an US-based megacorp. Given that, a country has exactly two choices. First one is let those megagiants colonize the local market, harnessing all the profits and then maybe opening some local offices someday; second one is try to fend off the global number ones and develop own services controlling the same business model slots, understanding that these local players would not be very different from a global player (either by cloning like VKontakte or by converging like Yandex), and that the global megacorp would probably be overally more advanced (counterexample is south korea where local services run circles around clumsy google in the terms of tech). Doing the first way you submit all your market to US megacorps and then try to fit in some original, tiny but global, business niche (since all the big slots would already be taken). So I applaud that Russia could go the second way, for sure.

vectorpush 15y ago

More power to them, they are filling a need that is generally unserviced by an English speaking hegemony. Yeah, there are some rip offs, but imitation of popular brands is nothing new.

dimitar 15y ago

Don't all startups don't rip off from each other?