polus.r52.ru was the website of the Nizhny Novgorod trading firm "Nizhny Novgorod Partner" (Nizhegorodsky Partner), which supplied refrigeration, gas, and kitchen equipment[1]. As the home page put it, the company "promotes the products of manufacturers from Nizhny Novgorod Oblast and neighboring regions"[1]. The site lived in the regional domain r52.ru, and the bottom of the home page carried the signature "Hosting by 'R52.RU'"[1]. The earliest snapshot of the home page saved by the Wayback Machine is dated 15 April 2002[1], and the last is dated 18 September 2011[4].

A single page: "About the Firm"

All that survives of the site is the front page, titled "Nizhny Novgorod Partner. About the Firm," with a single section of the same name[1]. As the home page stated, the firm "was formed on 15 May 1992," its "core team was assembled over a short period," and the company "holds a stable position in the market for refrigeration, gas, and kitchen equipment"[1].

The assortment is described in general terms: for refrigeration equipment, the page claimed, "all manufacturers of the Russian Federation and CIS countries were represented"[1]. Singled out separately was a line the firm called promising — "supplying gas equipment and related goods to urban and rural districts newly being connected to gas"[1]. The text closed with an invitation to cooperate: the company stated that it welcomed new contacts in the purchase and sale of household appliances and hoped for cooperation with regions interested in marketing its products and selling their own goods[1].

The surviving snapshots of the home page contain no product catalog, no prices, no address, and no phone number — the site was limited to this self-presentation. The text did not change for years: the snapshots from August 2003[2] and January 2005[3] repeat the April 2002 text word for word, down to the same typo, "inadeemsya" ("i hope for," misspelled without a space)[1]. The only noticeable difference is that by 2005 the hosting signature "R52.RU" had disappeared from the bottom of the page[3]. The 2005 and 2011 snapshots are saved in the KOI8-R encoding[3][4], typical of the Russian web of that era.

A place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site belongs to that layer of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet made up of corporate "calling cards": a single page about the firm, no feedback channel, no updates for years. Its home zone was not the national one but the regional r52.ru, and the hosting, too, carried a regional name[1].

The site was not a notable one. In the surviving final vote tally of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day for 2004, polus.r52.ru does not appear[5], even though other sites in the r52.ru zone are listed there[5]. In our surviving samples of the Counter.nn.ru ranking, no traffic data for it is recorded either; it entered our census via the nn.ru directory listing — see the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

"Site closed for reconstruction"

What happened to the site between 2005 and 2011 cannot be reconstructed from the surviving snapshots. In the snapshot from 18 September 2011, instead of the story about the firm, the home page carries two lines: "We apologize. The site is closed for reconstruction"[4]. This is the last snapshot of the home page saved by the Wayback Machine: the reconstruction, it appears, never came to anything.

By the time of our census of defunct Nizhny Novgorod sites, the domain polus.r52.ru no longer existed. Where the firm itself went, and whether it operates under another name, cannot be established from the surviving material of the site.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2002 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Home page, 2005 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Home page, 2011 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — Results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet vote, 2004 (archive)