The sixth Runet national award ceremony was held in Moscow on Wednesday.
The prize is awarded for major contributions to the development of the Russian Internet segment, the .ru domain, which marks its 15th anniversary in 2009.
The prize has six categories: State and Society, Culture and Mass Communications, Science and Education, Business and Economy, Health and Recreation, as well as Technology and Innovations.
A total of 66 companies and 365 web portals were nominated for the prize, established in 2004 by the Russian Federal Press and Mass Communications Agency.
Google, Livejournal, Russian Wikipedia, VTB bank, and the Sport Express newspaper were among the winners. The Heroes of War and Money online game won a special prize in an Internet vote.
The agency's head, Mikhail Seslavinsky, who opened the ceremony, highlighted the growing number of Internet users across Russia.
"The total number of Internet users grew by 17% this year and what is more pleasant, the number of active Internet users those who browse the web more than once a week increased by 35%," he said.
In 2004, according to a survey by Global Reach, there were just 22 million Russians using the Internet, while in 2008, the Russian Network Information Center said the number had grown to 34 million people.
There are currently more than 45 million Internet users in Russia, according to data available from the Internet World Stats site.
The ceremony was timed to coincide with the launch of a national domain name .ðô - Russian Federation, using the Cyrillic alphabet instead of Latin letters.
RIA Novosti's special project InoSMI, which publishes foreign media articles translated into Russian, won a Runet Prize in 2007.
MOSCOW, November 25 (RIA Novosti)
