Google is now reaching more Russian Internet users each month than any other online service, the Vedemosti newspaper reported Tuesday.
The American company's success over Russian web giant Yandex has been attributed to increasing numbers of users accessing the service through tablets and smartphones, Vedomosti reported.
Statistics provided by market research agency TNS showed Google reached 20.5 million Russian users in April 2016. Yandex was only narrowly beaten with 20.4 million monthly users, while Mail.ru reached 19.3 million.
The TNS study followed online users between the ages of 12 and 64, living in cities of more than 700,000 people. It is the first time that the company has combined countrywide data taken from smartphones and tablets into its final findings.
In terms of daily users, Yandex retains its position as market leader with 12.3 million users. It is followed by Russian social network VKontakte (12.1 million users) аnd Google in third place (11 million users.)
Yandex has increasingly attributed Google's success to their Android mobile operating system, Vedomosti reported. In 2015, Android occupied roughly 85 percent of the Russian market for smartphones and tablets in natural terms.
Almost 60 percent of all Google's daily users access the site exclusively through mobile devices, while Yandex's audience is more likely based on desktop computers and laptops, the TNS report revealed.
