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Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses

ir.yandex

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Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses

#21

Post by pavlov »

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #13

>(Russian Google) Are there people here who don't know Yandex? Genuinely curious, if you didn't know what it is I'd like to hear from you.

The Yandex brand is only directly used in the Russian market, I think? The company does also have popular products abroad like the discount taxi app Yango, but you need to connect the dots there. (I suppose they intentionally try to brand these products away from Yandex to reduce the impact of the Russian connection.)

Regional sites and apps in general aren’t that well known. How many people on HN are familiar with Kaspi, the “WeChat of Kazakhstan”? Apparently it’s immensely popular there and completely unknown elsewhere. Like Kazakhstan, Russia isn’t a significant market globally.

Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses

#22

Post by paganel »

thriftwy wrote: post #18
H8crilA wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird accounting tricks in Russia include "the new nobility" making you offers that you cannot refuse. This is a country in which the FSB (equivalent of the FBI) is running their own protection rackets, even on a small scale of a local shop. Property law works very differently over there, which is to say it doesn't quite exist.

Volozh could stay in Moscow and keep Yandex, though he was not acting CEO for some time. But, he decided he prefers Israel (residing "behind the bump" in general sense). In modern political climate, you have to choose between having your pie and eating it.

It's like Zuckerberg choosing to leave to Singapore and stay there in case a war in Taiwan breaks up, while ideologically aligning with China, of course, I'm not so sure that in that scenario his US-based assets will remain intact.

Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses

#23

Post by ChatGTP »

apapapa wrote: post #2

Where are they from now? Not that it matters much.

I personally think it does matter, I use it often to find things that I can't find on Google. I was actually just thinking today how many thing I've been able to find using Yandex that I couldn't find using Google and that in some ways, I almost prefer it as a search engine lately.

Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses

#24

Post by mkl »

pavlov wrote: post #21
trompetenaccoun wrote: post #13

>(Russian Google) Are there people here who don't know Yandex? Genuinely curious, if you didn't know what it is I'd like to hear from you.

The Yandex brand is only directly used in the Russian market, I think? The company does also have popular products abroad like the discount taxi app Yango, but you need to connect the dots there. (I suppose they intentionally try to brand these products away from Yandex to reduce the impact of the Russian connection.) Regional sites and apps in general aren’t that well known. How many people on HN are familiar with K…

"Yandex" is used everywhere AFAIK. I (in NZ) have used their search-by-image, which sometimes finds things no other image search seems to be able to.

Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses

#25

Post by vertis »

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #13

>(Russian Google) Are there people here who don't know Yandex? Genuinely curious, if you didn't know what it is I'd like to hear from you.

I don't think it's inappropriate to provide context to people that might not be across Yandex. HN is read by a large volume of people from diverse backgrounds -- not always CS and/or startups.

I would not be surprised if some subset of those people hadn't heard of Yandex.

Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses

#26

Post by fragmede »

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #13

>(Russian Google) Are there people here who don't know Yandex? Genuinely curious, if you didn't know what it is I'd like to hear from you.

This community's favorite thing is to complain about something that's ill defined. A post about BGP without saying it's the border gateway protocol will have its comments go off on a stupid tangent of if an HN reader should be expected to know what BGP is. (seriously people, go Google the term and don't demand everyone spoon-feed your intellectual midgetry!) Thus, an explanation that Yandex is Russian Google is to try and head off that derail. Of course, now we're having this discussion instead, so it seems like we can't win.

Even if I've heard the name Yandex before, it's a good reminder of what it is.

Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses

#27

Post by golergka »

gtirloni wrote: post #8

50% discount for Russian oil oligarchs. I guess they really think Russia will continue to cut ties with the rest of the world for a very long time and are cutting their losses now.

50% discount is just the official rule. If they tried to acquire it on a real market, they would likely have to pay much more.

Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses

#28

Post by Throw73747 »

threeseed wrote: post #11

This is likely related to the US imposing secondary sanctions early this year. Yandex would lose access to their US/EU bank accounts if they were still operating in Russia.

Not just that. Russia is going to confiscate all Western assets in Russia as a counter measure. Valued roughly at 200B USD, mainly owned by EU countries.

Yandex would lose their Russian business in any case.

Re: Yandex to divest its Russia-based businesses

#29

Post by cm2187 »

mkl wrote: post #24
pavlov wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Yandex brand is only directly used in the Russian market, I think? The company does also have popular products abroad like the discount taxi app Yango, but you need to connect the dots there. (I suppose they intentionally try to brand these products away from Yandex to reduce the impact of the Russian connection.) Regional sites and apps in general aren’t that well known. How many people on HN are familiar with K…

"Yandex" is used everywhere AFAIK. I (in NZ) have used their search-by-image, which sometimes finds things no other image search seems to be able to.

But also can find by image likeness which allows you to find where an image is coming from. Google images used to do that but now they merely analyse the image and search for what they think is the textual description of the image.
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