Yandex Search is the largest search engine in Russia with an estimated 72% market share in Russia and a 2.8% market share worldwide. The websites collected data from Russians who may be interested in joining the organisations and supporting Ukraine. In the first half of 2024, the company received 36,540 requests from the Russian government to disclose user data, a 12% increase from the prior year. The fine came after Russia outlawed public displays of non-traditional relationships and lifestyles to people of any age. In late March 2022, Yandex was the subject of an investigation by Financial Times and Me2B Alliance, a nonprofit organization, as part of an application auditing campaign led by researcher Zach Edwards.
- In October 2019, the company unveiled the second smart speaker of its own design—”Yandex. Station Mini.” Also in October 2019, Yandex Taxi acquired Partiya Edy (‘The Party of Food’).
- Also in February 2018, Yandex acquired Uber’s businesses in Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus and Georgia.
- Yandex Search is the largest search engine in Russia with an estimated 72% market share in Russia and a 2.8% market share worldwide.
- On September 23, 1997, the Yandex.ru search engine was launched and presented at the Softool exhibition in Moscow.
- The company was acquired by Facebook in 2012 and Yandex received $5.7 million and 142,479 shares of Facebook for its stake.
Yandex
In 2014, the company opened its first European research and development office in Berlin. In November 2012, Yandex launched a mapping service for Europe and the U.S. In November 2011, it acquired software developer SPB Software for $38 million. In January 2011, the company acquired single sign-in service Loginza. In December 2010, Yandex launched Yandex.Start to find startups and work with them systematically, and purchased WebVisor’s behavior analysis technology. In September 2010, Yandex launched Yandex Music, a music streaming service, with a catalogue of 800,000 tracks from 58,000 performers.
Legal issues in Ukraine
In June 2017, the company closed its offices in Ukraine after its bank accounts were blocked. In November 2014, the company launched a new Chromium-based browser for Windows and Mac OS X. In May 2014, the company invested in SalesPredict, an Israeli company developing technology for predicting commercial sales. In July 2013, Mail.Ru began placing Yandex Direct ads on its search result pages.
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In April 2021, Yandex was accused by the Federal Antimonopoly Service of promoting its own products in its search results. The company argued that it was impossible to comply with the relevant law without compromising its users’ privacy. The company sent an apology by email to the owners of the compromised mailboxes, but no compensation was announced. In February 2021, Yandex admitted that one of its system administrators with access rights to Yandex’s email service had enabled unauthorized access, leading to almost 5,000 Yandex email inboxes being compromised. In March 2023, Yandex published the source code for YTsaurus, a platform for work with big data.
It is used in its own voice assistant Alice as well as in Yandex.Go and Yandex Market services. In June 2022, the company published the source code for the YDB database management system. In October 2013, Yandex launched Cocaine, an open-source PaaS system for creating custom cloud-hosting apps.
Also in June 2008, Yandex acquired SMILink, a Russian road traffic monitoring agency, which was merged into Yandex Maps. In 2008, Yandex increased bandwidth between its Moscow data centers and UA-IX in Ukraine fivefold. In September 2005, Yandex opened an office in Ukraine and launched a Ukrainian website. In 2000, Baring Vostok Capital Partners acquired 35.72% of the company for $5.28 million. Arcadia became part of CompTek, a software and computer parts supply company, with Volozh as the CEO in 2000. In 1990, Arkady Volozh contacted Ilya Segalovich (1964–2013), a friend of his from high school, to join his venture developing algorithms to search Russian texts.
Compromise of email accounts of 5,000 users (February
In October 2024, the company announced plans to invest $400 million in Turkey. However, it is speculated that the publicly identified owners are intermediaries for others. The publicly identified investor group includes Alexander Chachava (25%), Pavel Prass (15%), Lukoil (15%), Alexander Ryazanov (10%), and senior management (35%). In June 2023, the company launched a test of its first self-driving taxi in Moscow.
In September 2019, Yandex announced plans to create an investment portal in partnership with VTB Bank. In December 2018, Yandex announced the release of the Yandex.Phone, a smartphone. In May 2018, Sberbank and Yandex completed a joint venture deal to develop a B2C eCommerce ecosystem. Also in February 2018, Yandex acquired Uber’s businesses in Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus and Georgia. The platform generates income via advertising and in-app purchases as well as its in-game currency called “Yans”. In 2018, the company launched Yandex Games, an Internet gaming platform accessible via browser and mobile.
- Also in September 2011, Yandex acquired 10% of Blekko for a $15 million investment as part of a $30 million financing round.
- In October 2013, the company acquired KinoPoisk, the biggest Russian movie search engine.
- In May 2023, Yandex launched YandexGPT, a neural network analogous to the ChatGPT neural network.
- In November 2011, it acquired software developer SPB Software for $38 million.
- In December 2018, Yandex announced the release of the Yandex.Phone, a smartphone.
- However, in June 2023, Yandex announced it was looking for ways to exit the joint venture.
In March 2022, Tigran Khudaverdyan resigned as executive director and deputy CEO after being sanctioned by the European Union for “hiding information” from the Russian public through the manipulation of search results. Many of the articles displayed in Yandex’s news aggregators were also from Russian state-owned and state-sponsored sources and the top search results about the war would sometimes prominently feature pro-war websites. Yandex denied that it was practical to identify users based on the information harvested and stated that requests for the data would be rejected. It is a speech-recognition and synthesis technology as well as a public API for speech recognition that Android and iOS developers can use. In 2012, Yandex initiated research and development in the field of natural speech processing.
In October and November 2018, Yandex was targeted in a cyberattack using the Regin malware, aimed at stealing technical information from its research and development unit on how users were authenticated. In March 2014, it acquired Israeli geolocation startup KitLocate and opened a research and development (R&D) office in Israel. In October 2013, the company acquired KinoPoisk, the biggest Russian movie search betista casino login engine. In March 2007, Yandex acquired moikrug.ru, a Russian social networking service. In 2001, Yandex launched the Yandex.Direct online advertising network.
In 2010, Yandex launched its “Poltava” search engine algorithm for Ukrainian users based on its MatrixNet technology. In June 2008, Yandex announced the formation of Yandex Labs in Silicon Valley to foster innovation in search and advertising technology, with Vishal Makhijani as its CEO. In 2007, Yandex introduced a customized search engine for Ukrainian users, and in May 2007, it opened a development center in Kyiv. On June 1, 2017, Yandex closed its offices in Kyiv and Odesa after the Security Service of Ukraine raided the offices and accused the company of illegally collecting Ukrainian users’ data and sending it to Russian security agencies.
In September 2008, the company acquired the rights to the Punto Switcher software program, an automatic Russian-to-English keyboard layout switcher. In 2009, all services of were localized for the Ukrainian market. They developed search software together under the company name Arcadia.
The new plant will produce servers, data storage systems, gateways, and smart equipment under the “Openyard” brand. In October 2021, construction of a new plant in Ryazan Oblast was launched with 1 billion roubles during the first stage of investments. Also in August 2021, Yandex acquired Uber’s stake in its self-driving car division and food delivery business in a $1 billion transaction. In July 2020, the company terminated its joint venture with Sberbank, fully acquiring Yandex Market and selling its interest in Yandex Money, which was rebranded as YooMoney. For the month of April 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic in Russia, Yandex made its home COVID-19 testing service free of charge for all residents of certain areas. In October 2019, the company unveiled the second smart speaker of its own design—”Yandex. Station Mini.” Also in October 2019, Yandex Taxi acquired Partiya Edy (‘The Party of Food’).
It implemented the YandexGPT generative neural network in the virtual assistant Alice. Also in September 2022, Zen, Zen News, and yandex.ru were sold to VK. In September 2022, the bank accounts of the company’s affiliates in Finland, including those of Yango Group, were frozen. However, in June 2023, Yandex announced it was looking for ways to exit the joint venture.
In 1998, Yandex launched contextual advertisement on its search engine. On September 23, 1997, the Yandex.ru search engine was launched and presented at the Softool exhibition in Moscow. Yandex was founded by Arkady Volozh and launched its first product, a search engine, in 1997.
In August 2011, Yandex acquired The Tweeted Times, a news delivery startup. In June 2011, Yandex and Rambler signed an ad network deal to freeze out Russian competitors. At that time, Baring Vostok Capital Partners owned a 35% stake in the company and Tiger Technologies owned a 15% stake. (now called Nebius Group), raised $1.3 billion in an initial public offering on NASDAQ, the biggest initial public offering for a dot-com company since Google’s offering in 2004. The company was acquired by Facebook in 2012 and Yandex received $5.7 million and 142,479 shares of Facebook for its stake. In January 2009, Firefox 3.5 replaced Google with Yandex as the default search provider for Russian-language builds.
