gruz.nnov.ru was a site in the Nizhny Novgorod domain zone nnov.ru devoted to the import and sale of heavy-duty trucks: tractor units, refrigerated trucks, trailers and semi-trailers[1]. The substantive text of the home page survives in a single snapshot from our sample — from 13 July 2003[1]; already by the last day of that same year the address was serving the standard test page of the web server[2]. The site entered our census of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet through the directory of the nn.ru catalogue, from the section "Firms (Enterprises): Auto: Car Trade," where it was listed under the name "Freight trucks" with the description: "Import of heavy-duty, trailer, special-purpose and other equipment. Tractor units, trailers and semi-trailers."
What the home page offered
The home page stated: "We carry out the import and distribution of heavy-duty transport in Russia," and offered tractor units, refrigerated trucks, trailers and semi-trailers on the domestic market[1]. It listed the brands the firm worked with — "well-known European and domestic manufacturers": VOLVO, SCANIA, MAN, MERCEDES BENZ, SCHMITZ, LAMBERET, NORFRIG, VANHOOF, KAMAZ, MAZ[1]. It also mentioned separately cooperation "with leading European suppliers of freight equipment from the near and far abroad"[1].
From the home page the reader was directed to the "Products" section, where, it was claimed, one could select the needed freight equipment, and the catalogue of vehicles "is constantly updated"[1]. Besides the ready-made catalogue, the company promised to import any equipment to order, stated that all trucks were customs-cleared and had passed technical inspection by the company's specialists, and mentioned a discount system for regular customers[1].
Neither the legal entity's name, nor an address, nor a phone number, nor visitor counters appear in the surviving text of the home page — only a description of the line of business[1]. The site's only documentary tie to the city is the domain zone nnov.ru itself and the entry in the Nizhny Novgorod catalogue; who exactly stood behind the project cannot be established from the surviving material.
Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet
The site remained an inconspicuous one. In the catalogue directory it was listed with "Rating: none," and it does not appear in our surviving samples of the Counter.nn.ru ranking — it entered the census through the thematic directory rather than through counter readings, so we have no data on its traffic. In the surviving results table of the vote of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day for 2004, the domain gruz.nnov.ru likewise does not appear[4]: by the time of the vote the site at that address had already effectively ceased to exist.
For more on how our sample is constructed and what sources are used to reconstruct the fate of such addresses, see the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.
How it closed
Between July and December 2003 the content was removed from the server. The snapshot from 31 December 2003 shows, instead of the site, the standard stub page: "Test Page for Apache Installation" — a message that the installation of the Russian Apache web server was successful and that the administrator may replace this page with their own content[2]. The same stub stands in the snapshot from 1 September 2004[3]: eight months later the address still responded, but the site was no longer there.
The last snapshot of the home page recorded in the web archive is dated 30 October 2005[5]. Today the domain does not work. In our sample of snapshots from the site, one substantive page remains — the home page, from July 2003: a list of truck brands and a promise of customs-cleared equipment to order.
Sources
- web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
- web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (web server stub) (archive)
- web.archive.org — Home page, 2004 (archive)
- web.archive.org — Results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet vote, 2004 (archive)
- web.archive.org — Home page, 2005 (last snapshot in the web archive) (archive)