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Fifteen percent ownership of Russian email, news and blog portal Mail.ru was purchased this summer for $300 million, according to new reports today from Russian journalists citing sources close to the deal. That puts the full value of the company at a whopping $2 billion, 30% more than Google paid for YouTube.

The shares were bought by internet investment firm Digital Sky Technologies, which now controls 50.6% of Mail.ru. You can see a clumsily Google-translated version of the site's "blogs" section here.

Russia, which is home to almost 30 million of Europe's 350 million Internet users may begin to extend its strict media censorship laws to the Internet, according to a report in the AFP. State newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta reported today that Russia's prosecutor's office wants to toughen its "anti-extremism" laws on the web. Most newspapers and television are already under some form of governmental control, which makes the Internet one of the last places for free press in the country. New proposals would begin to erode the last bastion of press freedom in the country.