Russian President Vladimir Putin has called the Internet a CIA project and warned Russians against making Google searches. Putin told a group of young journalists that the Internet was controlled from the start by the CIA and its surveillance still continues. Responding to questions from a pro-Kremlin blogger, Putin warned that information entered on Google all goes through servers that are in the States and everything is monitored there. He also made ominous comments on Russia's most popular search engine Yandex, suggesting it could become more tightly controlled. Yandex handles some 60 per cent of search queries in Russia and has a presence in several other countries. Yandex's shares fell over 4.3 per cent on the NASDAQ after Putin's comments.