[10] The business was originally owned by Port.ru, a company founded in 1998 by Eugene Goland, Michael Zaitsev and Alexey Krivenkov as a spin-off from DataArt.

In October 2010 Mail.ru Group announced plans for an IPO via the London Stock Exchange listing of a subsidiary – also called Mail.ru – worth more than $5bn.

The subsidiary included about a quarter of the group's shareholding in Facebook, stakes in Russia's two biggest social networking sites and Mail.ru.

[25] In January 2018 Mail.ru acquired ESForce, a holding company that owns a number of different esports businesses, including both Virtus.pro and SK Gaming, for US$150 million.

[27][28] In July 2019 Tencent-backed iDreamSky Technology Holdings and Mail.ru Group announced an alliance in the gaming sector in China and Europe.

[30] In 2020 the state Russian Direct Investment Fund, China's Tencent, Naspers, and others bought $600 million of GDRs and bonds from Mail.ru.

[32] In November 2021 Sberbank of Russia signed binding papers for selling its 36% of shares of "MF Tekhnologii" (controlling entity of VK company) to Gazprombank for 12,8 billion of roubles by the end of the year 2021.

[33] In December 2021 Sogaz Group bought all USM's (owned by Alisher Usmanov and his partners) indirect stake in "MF Tekhnologii" (controlling 57,3% of VK company).

[34] The state-run insurance company Sogaz Group is partly owned by Vladimir Putin's close friend Yury Kovalchuk.

[37][38] On 7 October 2022 VK's subsidiary "ITR" acquired 87.2% of the interactive video platform developer Movika[39] On 19 December 2022 VK announced the signing of a contract to acquire 51% of LLC "Medium Quality Production", one of the leaders in digital video content production in the CIS.

[42] In December, it was announced that it had bought a 100% stake in YClients Group, Russia's largest online enrolment and business automation platform for an unnamed amount.

[45] VK Group offers a variety of online communication products and entertainment services for Russian speakers all over the world, such as: On 15 May 2017 Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a decree to impose a ban on Mail.ru and its social networking services including VKontakte and Odnoklassniki as part of Ukraine's continued sanctions on Russia for its annexation of Crimea and involvement in the war in Donbas.

[49][50] The move was widely criticised as censorship, and Reporters Without Borders condemned the ban, calling it a "disproportionate measure that seriously undermines the Ukrainian people's right to information and freedom of expression.

[53] On 5 November 2017 the Paradise Papers, a set of confidential electronic documents relating to offshore investment, revealed that Russian state organizations with ties to Vladimir Putin pursued between 2009 and 2011 large investments in Facebook and Twitter via an intermediary—Russian-American billionaire and entrepreneur Yuri Milner, founder of Mail.ru and DST Global, who had befriended Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg[54] and was a business associate of Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law.