The number of Russian Internet users more than doubled in two years from August 2009 and grew from 10 million people to 25 million, the OpenStat think-tank said on Friday.
The growth was mainly due to users from Russian regions, while the share of users from Russia's two largest cities - Moscow and St. Petersburg - fell from 51% to about 40%.
The popularity of Microsoft Internet Explorer browser dropped significantly in the reported period, losing 17 percentage points. About 28% internet users currently prefer IE, followed by Firefox with 26% and Google Chrome with 17%.
Yandex retained its status of Russia's largest search engine, serving 54% of all search requests, while Google accounts for 40%.
Microsoft software is likely to retain its leading status among operating systems used by Russians, with nearly 94% of all Russian Internet users having Windows OS installed on their computers. The number, however, decreased by three percentage points in two years.
