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Microsoft Edge sets Yandex as default search engine in Moldova

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Re: Microsoft Edge sets Yandex as default search engine in Moldova

#81

Microsoft signed a deal in 2015 to set Yandex as the default search engine in several countries close to Russia. The article mentions "Kazakhstan, Turkey, and Ukraine". The list is not exhaustive, as I know about Moldova and Georgia. https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-partners-russias-ya... The list includes Ukraine! I've tested Edge with Ukraine as a Region on my MacOS, and it no longer appears to set it to Ya…

And once you go to Yandex search page, it will spam you to death to install Yandex browser, which will automatically install Russian government CA certificates, allowing them to spy on all your web traffic!

If I understand correctly, they can only spy on you if they have full access to your traffic, including the ability to modify it, in order to carry out a MITM attack.

Re: Microsoft Edge sets Yandex as default search engine in Moldova

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for "old fart" and expect to see Putin? Living in Ukraine, I would love for the world to never see Putin again. OTOH, I have nothing but tremendous respect for the engineers of the original Yandex. It's hard to overestimate how much they did for the russian-speaking world. I mean, they have basically invented practical stemming for Russian, Ukrainian and other close languages.

> they have basically invented practical stemming for Russian Living in Ukraine does not make you less factually wrong. They stood on the shoulders of Sergei Starostin and Andrey Zaliznyak. The whole field of Russian Computational Linguistics owes to these two people and their faceless students. Not just Yandex Search.

Thank you, I'm quite familiar with the two.

Yandex search (more specifically: mystem and Yandex.site) was the first practical implementation of their work.

Re: Microsoft Edge sets Yandex as default search engine in Moldova

#83
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's bizarre that the nixed Project Dragonfly is a considered a bigger embarrassment than Bing working continuously to this day in China.

I made the comparison with Dragonfly because they had special features planned to make users more easily identifiable for the PRC government, thus the similarity with this MSFT/Yandex situation. Are you aware of Bing doing anything like this? (I think it's bad enough that they take part in censorship, don't get me wrong.)

Whatever Google was doing with Dragonfly was to comply and gain re-entry to China, we can assume Bing has to do whatever Google was supposed to do.

Re: Microsoft Edge sets Yandex as default search engine in Moldova

#84
post #50

I use yandex over google/bing. Works well for western censored content - however it does have a clear disinfo bent for english language searches. I still prefer it over google simply because it returns results like google used to in 2010 or so lol. Give it a go, you'll see what I mean.

I use Yandex sometimes for the same reasons, it is like Google from 2010, image search still works and old personal websites are still indexed. Is Yandex still Russian company or is it detached from Russia like Jetbrains and Telegram?

They never released any official statements condemning the war or leaving russia, none of their services were shut down there, and they still actively hiring new people in russia. Yandex services is also widely known for spreading pro-war propaganda, disinformation and fakes while censoring opposition media: https://meduza.io/feature/2023/01/30/yandeks-blokiroval-izob...,

https://meduza.io/news/2022/03/01/yandeks-segodnya-klyuchevo...

Re: Microsoft Edge sets Yandex as default search engine in Moldova

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yandex and RT are the top of rus disinformation and anti-west/divisive content.

I've experienced more divisive content from western media itself than overt anti-west stuff from RT or yandex lmao.

> I've experienced more divisive content from western media itself than overt anti-west stuff from RT or yandex lmao. there is enough of media in the west that is in partially/wholly owned or heavily sponsored by rus and that transmit their propaganda or divisive narratives. All under disguise of free speech. And then someone may even blame that it's western media itself with their freedom of speech. how convenient.

Re: Microsoft Edge sets Yandex as default search engine in Moldova

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe in English, but you have no idea how deep the rabbit hole goes. My Eastern European in-laws are hooked on Russian propaganda/disinfo and its all delivered to them in their language or Russian and its not coming from RT. Having said that, I always chuckle at Americans who are so suspicious of RT given that they platform people like Cornell West and Chris Hedges who are absolutely blacklisted in western media. I…

>Having said that, I always chuckle at Americans who are so suspicious of RT given that they platform people like Cornell West and Chris Hedges who are absolutely blacklisted in western media. Virtually everyone with any remotely anti-war view is completely blacklisted from corporate Western media, which is basically the propaganda arm of the DC blob. This is not an endorsement of RT or non-Western media (which is ri…

I've been like you good part of my life. Until very recently, when it hit people close to me. Fsck pootin, he's getting more and more insane. he won't stop till he's punched into his face such that his neck is broken.

Re: Microsoft Edge sets Yandex as default search engine in Moldova

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yandex search is vastly censored. See recent leaks for the list of the keywords they replace in search queries.

By "replace" do you maybe mean "alias"? In any case, the problem is that anything else is also censored. DuckDuckGo stopped indexing RuNet altogether and Google is... Google.

It's literally rewriting search queries to avoid showing putin in negative context, when people search for "khuilo" or "bunker grandpa", "main thief" etc.

https://twitter.com/romankulish/status/1620227618435125248/p... https://meduza.io/feature/2023/01/30/yandeks-blokiroval-izob...

Re: Microsoft Edge sets Yandex as default search engine in Moldova

#88
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To my understanding, Yandex is nowadays based in the Netherlands.

Not after the war. Yandex had it's parent company which was headquartered in the Netherlands removed from operations and instead a new company headed by Aleksei Kudrin, a longtime confidant of President Vladimir Putin was put in charge.

Love the down votes. Sorry about reality guys. You're probably just supporting innocent/aligned in thought Russian programmers:

https://ain.capital/2023/01/27/yandex-developers-used-racist...

Re: Microsoft Edge sets Yandex as default search engine in Moldova

#89

I use yandex over google/bing. Works well for western censored content - however it does have a clear disinfo bent for english language searches. I still prefer it over google simply because it returns results like google used to in 2010 or so lol. Give it a go, you'll see what I mean.

>Works well for western censored content Not sure if that's what you mean, but Yandex is great for piracy and otherwise illegal content.

Also great for casual racism.

https://www.itpro.com/security/data-breaches/369966/yandex-d...

This is sadly probably a draw for a lot of 'Russian is the only country maintaining traditional western values' types.

Re: Microsoft Edge sets Yandex as default search engine in Moldova

#90
post #53

I see often enough cyrillic street names in Google Maps or Street View in Germany using Windows in Germany with regional settings for one of former soviet “republics”. Tried to report it to Google but nobody cares despite russian language and cyrillic writings have nothing in common with my regional settings.

As I said somewhere else on this site, don't expect people raised in pleasant SV to understand the complexities of modern world.
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