From a Simple Catalog
to a Sophisticated Platform

A year later, we acquired our own full-text search, which took into account Czech diacritics and various encoding methods. A year later, we offered users a freemail service, and in the following years, more products were added. By 2001, we were already offering news, TV program, weather forecast, cultural and financial overviews, a map of the Czech Republic, or the community service Lidé.cz.

At the turn of the millennium, the Swedish investment company Spray Ventures invested in our development, and we became the joint-stock company Seznam.cz, a.s. Until then, Ivo operated the company as a sole trader. Spray initially acquired a 1% stake in Seznam, then 17.5%, and finally a 30% stake in the company. Ivo owned 70% of the shares until 2016, when he became the sole owner of the company again.

Since 2003, our dog mascot has been with us. The digital version was inspired by a real Jack Russell Terrier belonging to a colleague from Brno. Ivo stepped down from management in 2006, when the then technical director Pavel Zima became the general director. He remains in the company’s leadership today as a member of our board.

We began venturing into the world of mobile applications in the 2010s. Our users can download a range of our services to their phones, such as Mapy.cz, Email.cz, or Stream. However, the key application for us is Seznam, which offers our search, access to the homepage, and news. This has been part of Seznam’s portfolio since its inception, but we began writing Seznam’s independent history as a media house in 2016, when we founded Seznam Zprávy. Two years later, the terrestrial station Televize Seznam appeared on TV screens for the first time. In 2019, we bought two regional radios – Expres FM and Classic Praha, and four years later, we became the owner of the publishing house Borgis, which publishes the daily Právo and prepares content for the servers Novinky.cz, Sport.cz, and Super.cz.

We are among the first domestic companies to start selling banner advertising. It remains the main source of funding for our development and service innovations, although the transformation of the digital market and the need to diversify our income also affect us.

Today, we are a leading technology company whose services reach 90% of the Czech internet population. The Seznam homepage is visited daily by almost four million people who come for news, entertainment, and work. We offer more than 30 products and services and are a significant business partner for advertisers in the advertising business.