History of Yandex

• Main article about the company: Yandex

Company History Feature Articles

• Yandex financial indicators
• How Yandex buys and sells companies
• Yandex IT infrastructure
• Yandex offices
• Unmanned vehicles "Yandex"
• Yandex Education Initiative
• Hunt for errors (Yandex program)

2024

Entering the Outdoor Advertising Market

On September 5, 2024, it became known about Yandex's entry into the outdoor advertising market. The company told about this in RBC. They noted that "new advertising products" will be released.

By the end of 2024, the company will begin selling digital outdoor Signage, including placement on billboards, subway screens and interactive structures in public places. According to the publication, Yandex is considering two key areas of development in this segment. The first is the sale of its own advertising equipment, and the second is cooperation with other market operators in the field of digital outdoor Signage (Digital Out of Home, DOOH). Since the spring of 2024, the company has been actively working on various integration options for this market.

Yandex announced the entry into the outdoor advertising market

By September 2024, the Yandex ecosystem has 1.4 thousand advertising surfaces located at the points of issue of orders. " Yandex.Market However, this inventory is hardly used for external advertising and is only used to promote the marketplace itself. In addition, Yandex has a project to place ads on screens on the roofs of service cars Yandex.Taxi"," but the operator of these structures is the Rome group.

In the first half of 2024, according to Admetrix, Yandex entered the top five largest advertisers in the outdoor advertising segment in Russia. The company's market share is 4.5%, second only to Sberbank, whose share reaches 8%. Other major players in this area include Ozon with a 3.7% stake, T-Bank with 2.4% and VTB with 2.3%.^[1]

According to Sergey Gumel, CEO of Volt Media Direction Groupe, if your own inventory serves as the basis for launching a new Yandex project, this may be promising, the expert said.

Competition in the conditions of market enlargement, in my opinion, will have a favorable effect on its general situation, "he added.

Opening of product minimarkets

In July 2024, Yandex launched a new project to open food minimarkets. The first retail outlet appeared in Moscow on 2nd Zvenigorodskaya Street, next to the premium residential complex "Residence Monet."

According to Shopper's, Yandex has already begun searching for employees for a new line of business. The vacancies posted indicate that the advantage in employment will be the experience of working in large retail chains, such as Pyaterochka, Krasnoe & Beloe, Perekrestok, Magnit and Auchan.

Yandex has launched a new project to open grocery minimarkets

According to Dmitry Tokarev, managing partner of Retail consulting company, the area of ​ ​ Yandex minimarkets may be 100-150 square meters. The expert notes that this format allows you to place stores as close as possible to customers, offering the necessary set of consumer goods. Investments in the opening of one outlet are estimated at 7-8 million rubles.

The new Yandex project fits into the general trend in the development of small stores, which has recently been observed among large retailers. Thus, X5 Group launched the "About" network in a franchise, "Vkusville" develops the "Vkusville mini" format, and "Magnit" tests "Magnit Nearby."

Tokarev emphasizes that the key factor in success for such stores is the correct formation of the assortment, which allows us to meet the daily needs of customers in a limited retail area.

For Yandex, opening minimarkets can be a way to strengthen positions in the food trade. According to the Infoline e-grocery Russia Top rating, in 2023, the total sales of Yandex.Lavka and Yandex.Market amounted to 87.9 billion rubles, which corresponds to fifth place in the ranking.

Yandex already has experience in offline trading. Since 2018, the company has been developing the Yandex Store and Museum project, which sells goods with company symbols. In addition, Yandex.Lavka opened micromarkets with vending machines and seasonal cafes in park areas of Moscow.^[2]

Launch of the program for future front-end and back-end developers in MPEI

Yandex Education developed unified programs for future front-end and back-end developers, which will be launched at NRU from the 2024/25 academic year. MEI The project will be launched in 19 universities throughout. Russia The modules are built into university courses and will strengthen them with Yandex application disciplines and cases. More than 4,000 students from 12 regions will undergo training: from to Arkhangelsk region. Yandex Primorsky Krai announced this on May 29, 2024.

We are very glad that such large companies as Yandex become our educational partners, and in the future employers for specialists produced by MPEI. As of May 2024, an MPEI graduate is not just an engineer, he is a highly educated IT specialist who can work efficiently and efficiently in almost any technological field. It is this fact that is the foundation for the development of new areas in education, - commented Nikolai Rogalev, rector of the MPEI National Research University.

The new Yandex Education programs are the first example when educational content from an IT company is simultaneously integrated into almost two dozen universities across the country. Any Russian university that trains IT specialists will be able to introduce universal modules from Yandex experts into its educational programs.

Yandex launches educational programs at once in 19 universities in 12 regions. By expanding the number of partner universities, we make quality IT education accessible to students from all over the country. Yandex courses will not only increase the level of IT education in the country, but will also contribute to the development of the IT industry in the regions, "said Darya Kozlova, director of Yandex Education.

Students of the second and third courses will master Python and JavaScript, a Django backend, work with API services, object-oriented programming, get acquainted with server infrastructure management and other topics that will allow them to master the demanded IT competencies. Programs include project work and practical workshops with an analysis of industrial cases. Final projects of students will be evaluated by both teachers and expert practitioners from Yandeksa.​

Yandex announced the terms of exchange and redemption of shares in the Dutch Yandex N.V

On May 13, 2024, Yandex announced the terms of the exchange and repurchase of shares in the Dutch Yandex N.V for minority shareholders. Closed mutual investment fund (ZPIF) "Consortium. First," which acquires Yandex's Russian business for 475 billion rubles, offered shareholders of the Dutch Yandex N.V. to buy out securities and/or exchange them for shares of MKPAO Yandex in the ratio of 1:1.

In addition, Consortium. First is ready to redeem shares of Yandex N.V. for 1251.8 rubles apiece. The redemption offer limit is 50.4 million shares. The buyback option can be used by investors who, until November 30, 2023, transferred the securities to the Russian depository.

Yandex announced the terms of exchange and redemption of shares in the Dutch Yandex N.V

In total, ZPIF is going to redeem and exchange no more than 107 729 866, or 29.8%, of YNV shares for the subsequent closure of the acquisition of Yandex's Russian business.

The collection of applications for exchange will take place through the Moscow Exchange and the St. Petersburg Exchange. It will begin no later than May 16, 2024 and will last a little more than a month - until 15:00 on June 21. The date of acceptance of applications was set on July 8, the date of settlements - July 9, 2024. Participants in the OTC exchange and redemption will have to transfer shares of Yandex N.V. to the depository account of the Consortium. The first "within 10 business days from the date of acceptance of the application.

The St. Petersburg Stock Exchange noted that under transactions providing for exchange, the platform will not charge commissions from bidders and their clients, the trading platform said.

The offer is fully voluntary and provides an opportunity to exchange or sell shares of Yandex N.V., which are recorded in Russian depositories. Opportunities for monetizing such shares in the future may be limited due to the planned delisting of Yandex N.V. shares from the Moscow Exchange, as well as current and potential foreign restrictions on the Russian financial infrastructure, Yandex said in a statement.[3]

FSB detained ex-Yandex employee on suspicion of treason

On May 13, 2024, the Federal Security Service (FSB) of Russia announced the detention of a former Yandex employee in a treason case.

The FSB suppressed on the territory of the Nizhny Novgorod region the illegal activities of a former employee of Yandex LLC, who was involved in committing high treason in the form of providing financial assistance to the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) in activities directed against the security of the Russian Federation, the FSB Public Relations Center reported.

FSB announced the detention of a former Yandex employee in the case of treason

The agency distributed a video with the detention of an ex-employee of Yandex. The personnel shows that during a search of the suspect, the security forces found the English in use textbook, as well as a wallet with Russian rubles and foreign currency. The detainee himself during interrogation admitted that "he has a negative attitude towards the current government, participated in protests," and also transferred money to a Ukrainian charitable organization after the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine.

The ex-Yandex employee detained for treason admitted that he transferred money to the Ukrainian fund "Come Back Alive," which raised funds for the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. For the transfers of this organization, the FSB warned Russians back in 2022. The fund is engaged in the acquisition of ammunition, equipment, medicines and equipment for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The department also reported that the suspect was leaving Russia, hiding from partial mobilization, was brought to administrative responsibility for participating in unauthorized rallies.

The FSB Investigation Department opened a criminal case under Art. 275 of the Criminal Code (high treason). Under this article, in 2023, the courts found 39 Russians guilty, including two women. This is a record figure. Prior to that, the maximum number of convicts under this article was recorded in 2022, when 16 people were found guilty.^[4]

Money from the sale of foreigners' shares in Yandex will go to support Russian electronics manufacturers

On May 6, 2024, it became known that the Russian authorities intend to send part of the money from the sale of foreigners' shares in Yandex and Ozon to support domestic electronics manufacturers. This measure is intended to partially solve the problem of inaccessibility of soft loans, which arose due to lack of funding.

In accordance with government decree No. 407 of March 18, 2022, manufacturers of electronics and telecommunications equipment can receive loans at preferential rates (1-5% per annum) from some banks, such as VTB, Sberbank and Promsvyazbank for the purchase of components. However, at the end of 2023, banks transferred such borrowers from preferential to market rates, which is why the cost of loans rose to about 20%. This is due to the exhaustion of limits under the program due to the increase in the key rate by the Bank of Russia.

The Russian authorities intend to send part of the money from the sale of shares of foreigners in Yandex and Ozon to support domestic electronics manufacturers

Against the background of the current situation, the authorities began to study new measures to support the mechanism of preferential lending. According to RBC, referring to informed sources, the government "plans to send funds from the sale of foreigners' shares in Yandex and Ozon to finance the body of loans." As of the beginning of May 2024, Yandex's capitalization at the Moscow Exchange is 1.36 trillion rubles, Ozon - 906 billion rubles. According to estimates, only from the sale of Russian assets to Yandex, the authorities can receive more than 71 billion rubles in the form of a contribution. In addition, from 2025, the scheme of concessional lending to electronics manufacturers will change: according to government decree No. 671, they plan to compensate for 70% of the key rate.

The head of the Association of Russian Developers and Manufacturers of Electronics (ARPE) Ivan Pokrovsky notes that purchases of imported components for electronics are difficult due to sanctions restrictions and difficulties with "financial" logistics. At the same time, a limited offer of concessional lending for replenishment of stocks can lead to a significant increase in prices for components^[5]

Co-founding role in ANO "Smart Apartment home"

At the end of March 2024, Yandex (through its subsidiary Alice Lab), Kaspersky Lab and the Etalon construction group became the new founders of the Smart Apartment home autonomous non-profit organization (ANO) to promote the development of digitalization of apartment buildings. This is evidenced by the data of the service "Kontur. Focus." Read more here.

HSE Partnership Development Plan

The partnership between Yandex and the Faculty of Computer Science of the Higher School of Economics will expand in three areas: the creation of new educational programs, the development of research in the field of AI and the use of generative neural networks in the educational process. FKN was founded by Yandex and the Higher School of Economics and became one of the leaders in the training of developers and specialists in AI and machine learning. During this time, 3,385 people became graduates of the faculty. The HSE announced this on March 28, 2024. Read more here.

Agreement with Sechenov University to develop AI for medicine and pharmaceuticals

Sechenov University Ministry of Health RUSSIAN FEDERATION Yandex and signed an agreement on long-term strategic cooperation. The joint collaboration is aimed at organizing research and developing new therapies cloudy using technology, developing technologies and, artificial intelligence Big Data as well as supporting educational IT programs for. Yandex medicine announced this on February 7, 2024. More. here

Change of ownership of the main legal entity in Russia

The international company joint-stock company (MKAO) Yandex, registered in a special administrative region (SAR) in Kaliningrad, became the owner of 99.999% of Yandex LLC instead of the Dutch Yandex N.V. The corresponding entry was entered in the Unified State Register of Legal Entities (USRUL) on January 22, 2024.

The press service of Yandex confirmed the change of ownership of the main legal entity of Yandex in the Russian Federation and called this step a "technical procedure."

We continue to prepare for restructuring. This is a technical procedure for optimizing the structure of legal entities of a group of companies. Yandex N.V. continues to be the parent company of the group. It is the founder of MK JSC Yandex, - quotes RBC the company's statement.

According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, MKAO Yandex also became the owner of 100% of Technoyak LLC and 49% of Yandex DC LLC, also affiliated with Yandex. The founder of MKAO is the former owner of Yandex LLC - the Dutch Yandex N.V.

The management and consultants of the Dutch Yandex N.V., the parent company of the Yandex group, continue to discuss various options for business reorganization by January 2024. One of them, according to RBC, provided for the creation of Yandex N.V. a Russian subsidiary, a controlling stake in which will be transferred to a consortium of investors, each of which will receive 7.28%.

Reuters reports that the completion of the restructuring of Yandex N.V. has been postponed from 2023 to 2024, Reuters wrote, citing sources. According to one of the agency's sources, the company has made "great progress" and has already handed over all the documents to lawyers. Yandex wants some of its structures to retain access to Western markets, despite sanctions against Russia, the publication said.^[6]

2023

Yandex spent 73 billion rubles in 3 years on the production and purchase of content. Now another 100 billion rubles have been allocated

In 2021-2023, Yandex invested approximately 73 billion rubles in the production and purchase of content. And in 2024-2025, the company intends to spend another 100 billion rubles on filling media services. Such data were released on June 19, 2024.

Olga Filipuk, content director of the Plus and Fantech division, which is part of Yandex, said that the funds will be used to buy rights to films, TV shows, books, sports broadcasts, as well as produce their own projects and hold offline events. It is noted that by mid-2024, the share of Yandex investments in Russian content was three times higher than investments in foreign content.

The company says that a significant part of investments is a reinvestment of income received from Yandex Plus subscribers, the number of which exceeds 30 million (as of June 2024). In particular, in 2023, Yandex reinvested more than half of the revenue of its entertainment services - Kinopoisk, Yandex Music, Bookmate and Yandex Poster. The company's investments also support Russian sports and increase interest in sports broadcasts among the mass audience.

Tens of millions of Russian residents now watch films and TV shows online, immediately listen to music, cheer for their favorite team and read books. The main driver of such active consumption is subscription services, where for a small regular fee a person gets unlimited access to millions of pieces of content, says Filipuk.

Participants in the Russian market told the Kommersant newspaper that Yandex's decision to increase investments "is associated with a redistribution of user interest in favor of local content." Against this background, the dynamics of the subscription services segment in the Russian Federation is slowing down: by the end of 2024, it is expected to grow by 10-14%, to 136 billion rubles, against an increase of 80% in 2023.^[7]

Yandex spent 6 billion rubles on cyber protection of its services over the year. This is twice as much as in 2022

Yandex spent 6 billion rubles in 2023 on cyber protection of its services. This is twice as much as in 2022. The company released such data on January 16, 2024.

These funds were aimed at developing secure storage systems, developing technologies for protecting against DDoS attacks and fraud, access management systems, independent audits and other important areas, including team development. The number of employees responsible for digital security grew by a third over the year.

According to Forbes, citing a statement from Yandex, the company in 2023 focused on protecting user data, improving infrastructure security and developing technologies to combat fraudsters. So, in order to protect user data and increase the security of their storage, the company developed a repository where all data is encrypted, while it is impossible to correlate them with a real user, Yandex said.

The company also pointed to an increase in the level of automation in production systems and increased control over actions within the infrastructure. In addition, a special mechanism has been implemented to confirm access to key systems, according to which the employee is obliged to confirm his actions as an additional factor. authentications

As part of the implementation of protection against DDoS attacks in 2023, Yandex has improved Smart Protection technology. In 2023, Yandex passed 39 independent audits to check the infrastructure for resistance to attacks and security of services, and also received several certificates of compliance with service protection with international standards.

Yandex added that in 2023 the fund of the Error Hunting program for errors and vulnerabilities increased from 40 to 100 million rubles. ^[8]

Latvia blocked access to all Yandex services

On December 28, 2023, the National Council for Electronic Media of Latvia (NEPLP) closed access to all sites associated with Yandex. In addition, the country's authorities intend to block access to the Yandex.Music service.

The imposition of the ban, as noted by Delfi, was announced by the head of NEPLP Ivar Abolins. The decision to block was made within the framework of the amendments to the law on electronic communications approved in March 2022. They give NEPLP the right to restrict access in Latvia to resources that distribute content that "poses a threat to the public order and national security of the republic." The authors of the project declare that the law will protect the information space of Latvia, including from propaganda.

On April 7, 2022, NEPLP restricted Latvia access to the yandex.ru and its mirror sites. In addition, the taxi ordering service "" was blocked in the country Yandex Go- on the grounds that it "transmitted data to those in." Russia servers The Latvian Motor Transport Directorate (ATD) decided to cancel the registration of Yandex Taxi and block the Yandex Go mobile application. At the end of December 2023, it was decided to restrict access to other Yandex resources.

In Latvia, access to the Yandex.Music website will be blocked, which also offers free access to Russian music, podcasts of persons subject to EU sanctions, and similar content, says Abolins.

The Latvian authorities believe that the transfer of Internet user data to countries that are not members of the European Union or NATO is a serious violation. In particular, ATD came to the conclusion that the most different information from the Yandex taxi order service is transmitted to servers in Russia: this is information about the transportation, drivers, vehicles, payment cards and payments made.^[9]

Yandex has re-registered applications in the App Store and Google Play to Serbian legal entities. Why do you need it?

Yandex has re-registered its applications to Serbian legal entities. This became known on December 19, 2023. Read more here.

Yandex created a company to compete with Avito

Yandex has established the Ad Placement Services company. The corresponding entry was entered into the Unified State Register of Legal Entities (USRUL) on November 24, 2023. Read more here.

FAS suspects Yandex of spreading unfair advertising

The Federal Antimonopoly Service () FAS will investigate the company "," Yandex which is suspected of violating antimonopoly laws. This was announced on November 21, 2023 by the press service of the deputy. State Dumas RUSSIAN FEDERATION Anton Nemkin

Earlier, the FAS Russia complained to a citizen about advertizing online subscriptions "." Yandex.Plus In the subscription ad, the company listed a lower price for the 44% discount service, which was not true. When trying to purchase a subscription at the specified price, the applicant was refused to purchase. Thus, consumers received information incorrect about the cost of the service, - said in a message published on the agency's website.

Now the FAS will evaluate Yandex advertising for violation of the law. If the company is found guilty, it faces liability in accordance with advertising legislation.

Of course, this is a small amount for such a large company, but in this case, reputational risks will cost Yandex much more. In pursuit of commercial profits, companies sometimes forget that deceiving customers is a dangerous business. This is closely monitored by authorized bodies, which will not allow leaving citizens in a vulnerable position, - said the deputy.

Yandex rewrote part of its assets to Technoyak

At the end of October 2023, several Russian assets of Yandex were rewritten to Technoyak. The relevant information is contained in the SPARK-Interfax system. Read more here.

Yandex decided to delete inactive accounts

Yandex announced a change in the policy for working with inactive Yandex ID accounts. From October, the service will begin to notify users with inactive accounts about the need to confirm the relevance of the profile and increase protection measures. In the new version of the rules for working with credentials, it is assumed that if the user has not performed any activities for more than two and a half years, then his account will be completely and irrevocably deleted. The truth will only happen after a few warnings. The company does not provide for the possibility of restoring an account even for legal owners. Credentials of remote accounts that had any activity in Yandex services after registration will not be available for reuse.

Account holders often forget about the accounts created or may lose access to them, the company explained. - Inactive accounts are often protected by old passwords. They are most vulnerable and, if compromised, can become a source of access to personal information or be used to send unwanted or malicious content.

To save your profile on the platform, the user needs to log in to any services that use Yandex ID at least once, or take any action using the credentials of the Yandex portal: for example, send a letter, save new photos or files to Disk, add feedback to Maps. With the help of Yandex ID, you can now quickly log into the services of Yandex itself and more than 15 thousand other sites and mobile applications.

After performing some active action, the user will most likely be asked to strengthen the protection of his authentication data in Yandex ID, which can be done using one of the methods: two-factor authentications a one-time password from SMS or the Yandex.Key application. If the user nevertheless decides to abandon the inactive account, he will be able to download the data stored by Yandex services and delete the account on his own by clicking on the corresponding links.

Creating an E-Commerce Division

Yandex has created a new e-commerce business area. It includes the services Yandex Market, Yandex Food, Yandex Lavka and Market Deliveri. The press service of the company announced this on October 24, 2023. Read more here.

Transfer of several Russian subsidiaries to the Dutch office

On October 17, 2023, Yandex fully transferred control over a number of Russian divisions of its Dutch public limited liability company Yandex N.V. The changes are aimed at "optimizing the structure of the group's legal entities."

In November 2022, the board of directors of Yandex N.V. announced its intentions to amend the ownership and corporate governance structure of the group of companies. In particular, it was considered the possibility of separating the main part of the business, including a number of foreign areas, into a separate structure, which will retain the Yandex brand.

Reportedly, as part of the reorganization, Yandex N.V. transferred to Yandex Unmanned Technologies LLC, Yandex Music LLC, Yandex.Verticulti LLC, Yandex.Carshering LLC and Yandex.Taxi LLC. Previously, these companies were owned by other legal entities registered in the Netherlands and Switzerland. In addition, Yandex N.V. with a share of 0.1% became one of the new owners of Yandex.Studio LLC, Yandex.Taxi Technologies LLC and Yandex Fantech LLC.

Yandex claims that the changes will help ensure the sustainable development of various business areas in all regions of its presence. Yandex will continue to develop as a private independent group of companies, work on the open market and compete with local and global players. In November 2022, it was said that the businesses of autonomous cars, cloud technologies, educational services and data markup platforms will continue to work in the Russian market, but their international parts will be allocated to independent companies under the management of Yandex N.V., which planned to withdraw from the shareholders of the group of companies and change its name.

Arkady Volozh's anti-war post cost him and Yandex $150 million

After the statement of the founder of Yandex Arkady Volozh criticizing the "special operation," the amount of payments due to the Dutch Yandex N.V. for the division of assets decreased from almost $250 million to $70-80 million. This was reported on October 5, 2023 by Frank Media, citing sources. Read more here.

Yandex has appointed new technical directors of Search, Advertising and Raidtech

On September 29, 2023, Yandex announced the appointment of new technical directors in the Search, Advertising and Raidtech divisions. They were respectively Alexey Gusakov, Valery Stromov and Ilya Rubin. Read more here.

Yandex will transfer personal data of Kazakhstanis to servers in Kazakhstan

On August 21, 2023, it became known that Yandex will ensure the storage of personal data of Internet users of Kazakhstan on servers located directly on the territory of this state.

From August 9, 2023, Astana suspended the work of the Kazakhstan domain name "Yandex" - yandex.kz. The Ministry of Digital Development, Innovation and Aerospace Industry of the Republic of Kazakhstan (ICRIAP) reported that this decision was made in connection with the "placement of an Internet resource on hardware and software complexes outside the territory" of the country. The department said that they turned to Yandex to receive "detailed information" about the locations of the processed data centers, measures taken to protect the personal information of citizens of Kazakhstan and "a way to interact with law enforcement and special agencies."

The heads of the ICRIAP and the Information Security Committee, which is a member of the department, held a working meeting with representatives of Yandex. Among other things, issues related to the protection of personal data of Kazakhstanis were discussed. According to the results of the negotiations, Yandex agreed to move the servers serving the yandex.kz Internet portal to Kazakhstan.

As part of the desire to strengthen partnership and national digital resources, Yandex confirmed its readiness to continue work on transferring servers serving the yandex.kz domain to the country - this has already been done for the Yandex Go service, the ICRIAP said in a statement.

The department also added that within the framework of cooperation, Yandex will ensure the transfer of the processing of personal data of Kazakhstanis to servers that are physically located in the state. The ICRIAP emphasized that in four years (by August 2023) approximately 30 thousand Internet resources were transferred to Kazakh servers.^[10]

Yandex shareholders approve joining 4 subsidiaries to simplify corporate structure

At the end of July 2023, Yandex shareholders approved the accession of four subsidiaries to the parent company Yandex N.V., registered in Holland. It is noted that this reorganization is aimed at simplifying the corporate structure of the IT holding.

As reported by Interfax"" with reference to the Yandex message, Yandex Media Services B.V. (these are Kinopoisk, "" "Yandex Music and other entertainment services), Yandex.Classifieds Holding B.V., MLU B.V. (this Yandex Taxi is" ") and Foodtech & Delivery Ops B.V Yandex Food." It is specified that this connection is purely technical in nature.

RBC citing sources, he wrote that in the event of a reorganization of Yandex, billionaire Vagit Alekperov, the owner Kismet Capital Group and former general director of MegaFon"," Ivan Tavrin as well as the structure associated with the family of the head of the faction To the State Duma in New People Alexei Nechaev, can apply for Russian business. The press service of Yandex told RBC that it does not comment on rumors. Alexey Nechaev and the press service of "New People" declined to comment. Alekperov and Lukoil the press service of "," as well as Kismet Capital Group, did not respond to requests from the publication.

The press service of Yandex told Interfax that the changes will not affect the group's restructuring plans. Earlier it was reported that a meeting of owners of class "A" shares was convened with the aim of approving issues on internal reorganization to simplify the corporate structure. In addition, the company held an annual meeting of shareholders (owners of class "A" and "B" shares participate in it).

At it, shareholders were re-elected for 4 years to the board of directors of Alexei Yakovitsky, who headed VTB Capital. The remaining 6 directors have not yet expired at the time of the meeting.^[11]

A fine of 2 million rubles for non-transmission of data on service users to the FSB

On June 19, 2023, the Magistrate's Court in Moscow imposed an administrative fine of 2 million rubles on Yandex, finding the company guilty of repeatedly failing to provide the FSB with information about users of the Yandex service. Services "required by the department to search for people or ensure the security of the country. Read more here.

3 Options to Retain Assets After Company Sale for Investors

On May 25, 2023, it became known that Yandex, as part of a comprehensive program to divide into Russian and international structures, will provide investors with several possible options for preserving assets.

According to Bloomberg, referring to information received from knowledgeable persons, on May 24, 2023, the board of the Netherlands-based parent company Yandex N.V. discussed the proposed conditions for the sale of 51% of Russian assets (estimated at approximately $7-7.5 billion). However, a final decision on this issue has not been made. According to reports, approximately 20% of Yandex belongs to Russians who can trade on the Moscow Exchange. If the sale of a stake in the Russian business takes place and local shareholders agree to an exchange, Yandex N.V. will own approximately one-third of the Russian division. Domestic billionaires are interested in acquiring a controlling stake in the Russian Yandex.

As part of the separation of Yandex's business, investors will be able to choose between three options: maintain a stake in a profitable Russian structure, receive monetary compensation or a stake in international startups. The deal requires the approval of at least two-thirds of shareholders, who, according to Bloomberg, will have to agree to low compensation for the fallen value of Russian assets. In general, transformation will help solve problems and overcome restrictions formed in a difficult geopolitical situation.

After the reorganization, Yandex N.V. expects to create a new international business that will control areas such as technology development for self-driving vehicles, cloud services, data labeling tools and educational projects.^[12]

Completion of the construction of a computer plant in Ryazan

Yandex, the group of companies LANIT"" Taiwan and the manufacturer electronic engineers Gigabyte completed construction the plant for the production of computer equipment in. This was announced Ryazan on May 19, 2023 by the press service of the deputy. State Duma of the Russian Federation Anton Nemkin More. here

Potanin and Alekperov sent Yandex an offer to buy a company for 600 billion rubles

Vladimir Potanin and Vagit Alekperov sent Yandex N. V. An offer to acquire a controlling stake in Yandex. This was reported on May 19, 2023 by Bloomberg, citing its sources. According to them, Russian billionaires are ready to pay 560-600 billion rubles for the purchase of the company.

According to the interlocutors of the publication, the proposed amount takes into account a discount of 50%, without which foreign companies cannot leave the Russian market - the Ministry of Finance established such a requirement in December 2022 for unfriendly countries, including the Netherlands. The board of directors may discuss these bids from 22 May 2023 during a meeting in Dubai.

Representatives of Yandex, Potanin and Alekperov declined to comment on Bloomberg. A Forbes source familiar with the discussion of Yandex's restructuring clarified that potential investors buy only an economic stake in the company, and "voting control should remain with the Yandex management team - represented by a specially created fund."

The upper limit of the range for assessing the value of Yandex's business is only 11% lower than the current market capitalization of the entire company at, To the Moscow exchange said RBC Konstantin Sinara Belov, an analyst at the bank, on May 19, 2023. According to him, the company is fundamentally undervalued, so selling the business at a price close to the current levels of the market may mean some erosion of minority shareholders' shares. At the same time, in such a scenario, there remains a significant growth potential for Yandex shares, depending on the conditions of the sale, the expert believes.

After the appearance of information about the possible sale of Yandex, the company's shares rose in price by 5.4%, to 2145 rubles per share, at the Moscow Exchange as of 12:12 Moscow time on May 19, 2023.^[13][14]

Named the main contenders for the purchase of Yandex

On May 4, 2023, key contenders became known for the acquisition of a controlling stake in the reorganized Yandex, which will be formed after the separation of the company with its founder Arkady Volozh.

In the current geopolitical situation, Volozh went abroad and decided not to return to Russia, leaving Yandex's main business. At the same time, he left himself the opportunity to develop several areas abroad, including unmanned vehicles and cloud services.

According to The Bell (recognized as a foreign agent by decision of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation), in connection with these changes, Yandex needs to find new shareholders - those who will take control of the new Russian company, which is formed after the division of assets. It is known that Yandex sent out an offer to sell a controlling stake in dozens of large Russian businessmen. Under the terms of the planned deal, potentially interested buyers must make a bid with a company valuation.

At the current stage, the task is to determine the price that will suit the seller (the Dutch Yandex N.V., which was previously controlled by the Volozh family trust), buyers and the Russian government, which has imposed severe restrictions on foreign investors leaving Russia, writes The Bell.

Yandex has received several offers. Among the candidates for the purchase of a controlling stake were the structures of the founder Lukoil"" Vagita Alekperova and the main shareholder Severstal"." Alexey Mordashov In addition, the Vladimir Potanin owner and president of the management company "" is showing interest in Yandex. Interros According to some reports, the proposal came from the owner of "," Novatek but Leonid Mikhelson his participation remains in question. It is also not clear whether the structure or Arkady Abramovich its partners will be among the potential buyers.^[15]

Opening an online master's degree for developers with ITMO

ITMO and Yandex are opening a set for a master's program dedicated to the development of high-load systems. Training takes place completely online. The university announced this on March 14, 2023. Read more here.

Notice from Nasdaq of forced delisting of securities

On March 15, 2023, the management of the Nasdaq exchange notified Ozon, Yandex, Headhunter and Qiwi of the impending forced delisting of their securities from March 24. Read more here.

Launch of development schools in Russia, Serbia and Kazakhstan

On February 27, 2023, Yandex announced the start of enrollment in its schools in Russia, Serbia and Kazakhstan. Lectures will be held online, then the practice will begin at the company's offices in Moscow, Belgrade and Almaty. Read more here.

The American investment company FMR increased its share in the parent structure of Yandex to 5.98%

The American investment company, FMR LLC operating under the Fidelity Institutional Asset Management brand, increased its stake in (Yandex N.V. registered Holland in the parent structure of the Russian Yandex) to 5.983%, which corresponds to 19.5 million shares. This became known in February 2023. A year earlier, FMR's share was measured at 4.928%, documents filed in said. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)

According to RBC, the deal to change the share in the capital was the first public case after the suspension of trading in Yandex shares, but investors can buy them on the OTC market. On February 13, 2023, the American investment company Invesco announced a decrease in its stake in Yandex N.V. to 8.3%.

According to Ekaterina Makeeva, partner and head of the sanctions practice of the A-PRO law firm, companies must submit a beneficial ownership report to the SEC (Form 13D) within ten days from the date of acquisition of a share that has crossed the 5% threshold, explaining including the purpose of the transaction (takeover or otherwise). Yandex N.V. may "not be aware of the purchase."

In this case, he is rather the affected party - the issuer who was not notified of the appearance of a new owner of a large package, - said Makeeva.

The analyst Finam"" Leonid Delitsyn believes that this transaction is necessary in order to obtain an independent assessment of the value of Yandex N.V. In his opinion, this is necessary both for the owners themselves for accounting, audit, lawsuits, possible separation of assets, and for potential investors.

"If the value of the Russian asset of Yandex can still be calculated based on reporting, then it is difficult to estimate how much a foreign asset costs. This deal allows you to do this, "Delitsyn explained in a conversation with Forbes[16]

Yandex discovered internal violations after the leakage of service source codes

On January 30, 2023, Yandex published the first details discovered during the investigation on the recent source code leak of a number of company services, and also apologized for what happened:

Now we are very ashamed, and we apologize to our users and partners. We consider it necessary to tell why this happened and what we intend to do in this regard.

Yandex assured that parts of the program code of some Yandex services published on the Internet do not threaten user safety or project performance, while a large-scale audit revealed several cases of violation of corporate ethics rules and "Yandex principles."

In particular, fragments of test algorithms were published on the Internet, which were used only to check the operation of services within the company itself. One of these algorithms turned on the device's microphone for a few seconds without mentioning "Alice." The company explained that the algorithm was written to reduce the number of false positives during testing by employees and to improve the quality of voice assistant activation.

During the audit, facts of violation of Yandex rules, including corporate ethics, were discovered. For example, the contact details of some partners, including drivers, were also found, various kinds of "crutches" and temporary solutions, offensive statements in the code, and so on.

Most of the violations occurred due to the fact that employees tried to improve the service or correct the error, Yandex said. The company promised to revise the approach to the principle of zero tolerance for "bugs," resume the formation of the principles of technoethics and take out data that is not related to algorithms and settings of projects from the repository.^[17]

The source codes were in the public domain

At the end of January 2023, the source codes of Yandex services were publicly available. The company confirmed the leak, but assured that it does not pose a threat to users.

The Yandex security service, according to the company's press service, discovered fragments of code from the internal repository (a tool for storing and working with code) in the public domain. However, their content differs from the current version of the repository, which is used in the company's services, they said.

Repositories are needed to work with code and are not designed to store personal data of users. We are conducting an internal investigation into the reasons for the source code fragments getting into the public domain, but we do not see any threat to our users' data or the platform's performance, a Yandex spokesman told RBC.

By January 26, 2023, the company is conducting an internal investigation. The press service noted that there was no hacking. According to the interlocutor of TASS, the data ended up on the network due to the fault of one of the company's employees.

Earlier, users of the Hacker News and Khabr forum reported the leak. It is clarified that 44.7 GB of Yandex source codes got into open access. The total number of archives is 83. Among other things, the archives contain parts of the Yandex code. Maps, Alice"", "", Yandex.TaxiYandex.Mail"", "" Yandex.Disk"and". Yandex.Market"" All merged files dated February 24, 2022. According to the Khabr portal, the archive appeared on the Web on January 25, 2023.

The author of the publication on breached.vc claims that he downloaded the source code in July 2022. The distribution contains the code of more than a dozen services, developer Arseniy Shestakov said in his blog.^[18]

2022

Departure of co-founder Arkady Volozh

December 30, 2022 Arkady Volozh announced his departure from Yandex. The co-founder of the company did this in a New Year's address to employees. Read more here.

Yandex filed a lawsuit against the supplier of IT equipment for 891.5 million rubles due to debts for supplies

On November 25, 2022, it became known that Yandex filed a lawsuit against the supplier of IT equipment A&DD Company for 891.5 million rubles due to debts for the supply of equipment. Read more here.

Kudrin agreed with the president his transition to Yandex and the division of the company's assets

On November 24, 2022, the head of the Accounts Chamber Alexey Kudrin , at a meeting with the president Russia Vladimir Putin , agreed on his transition to "" and Yandex the division of the company's assets, a source RBC familiar with the negotiations said.

As noted, a new legal entity will be created for Yandex's Russian assets, in which Kudrin should receive a "certain position" (which one has not yet been decided), as well as an option for 5% of the shares - 2% immediately, and the rest - after some time.

There may be several options for dividing the company, according to RBC sources familiar with the discussion. For example, in the case of a division into Russian and international parts, the founder and current main owner of Yandex Arkady Volozh should have an international block, he will also receive intellectual property rights in the field of unmanned and cloud technologies and educational services "Toloka" and "Yandex.Workshop."

Another RBC source close to Yandex claims that "Kudrin is considering the allocation of several international parts to^[19].

Pavel Demidov's transition to work at Yandex

On September 29, 2022, it became known about the appointment of Pavel Demidov as head of the department for relations with government agencies (GR) at Yandex. Read more here.

Yandex changes options in the employee motivation program for increased salaries and bonuses

On September 5, 2022, Yandex announced a change in the total income of employees who participate in the option program. If earlier their income consisted of salary, bonuses and options, now the "option" part will be replaced by an increase in salary and bonuses.

As noted in the company, the decision on increases, as before, will be made regularly based on the results of the work - they are evaluated once every six months for a review.

In addition, Yandex will introduce an additional motivational tool for managers and key specialists - an annual bonus. It will depend on the results of the entire company.

Trading in Yandex shares on NASDAQ has been suspended, so giving employees new options now makes no sense. In order for people to maintain predictable income, we decided to increase salaries and bonuses and pay annual bonuses. At the same time, we do not exclude that in the future the option program will resume work, "says Daria Zolotukhina, HR Director of Yandex.

Previously issued options that are in the process of vesting can be exchanged for an additional cash payment. Yandex offers this opportunity to employees from the moment of suspension of trading on NASDAQ.

The compensation package that Yandex offers employees also includes extended health insurance, discounts on VHI for family members, reimbursement of food costs, the ability to receive a loan for the purchase of housing and other benefits and bonuses, the company's press service said.

On February 28, 2022, the New York Exchange and Nasdaq closed trading in Yandex securities, which by that time had fallen in price by 53% - to $18.94 apiece. Employee options were "burned out" as a result. In March, Yandex paid employees an additional salary as compensation. After - replaced options with cash payments.^[20]

Yandex discusses with the authorities moving from the Netherlands

Presidential Administration of Russia is negotiating with Yandex"" to move the head legal of the company from, Netherlands this was announced on August 18, 2022 by the agency Bloomberg , citing its sources.

The first deputy head of the administration Sergei Kiriyenko allegedly takes part in the negotiations, and the head of the Accounts Chamber Alexei Kudrin acts as an intermediary.

The agency's sources clarified that negotiations are underway only on the relocation of the IT company from the "unfriendly" state and do not affect the issue of changing the owner of the company.

Arkady Volozh, at the same time reports Bloomberg, is ready to abandon his stake in Yandex in exchange for maintaining intellectual property rights. It will help develop business abroad - the emphasis will be on the development of drone and cloud technologies, which can be engaged in 10% of Yandex employees who are abroad^[21].

Yandex, VK and Ozon asked the state for a preferential loan of 130 billion rubles to avoid default

The Russian government has allocated Yandex, VK and Ozongot loans worth 130 billion rubles. The subsidy is required for companies to meet obligations to bondholders. This became known on August 4, 2022.

{{quote 'The government provided Yandex, Russian Internet VK and Ozon with a preferential crediting to refinance the resulting debt in the amount of 130 billion rubles. in connection with the termination of trading in their securities, - reported in. Ministry of Digital Development }}

The information was confirmed by VK, noting that the company asked for a preferential loan "to restructure the resulting debt." Yandex reported that it took a target loan from a commercial bank for payments on Eurobonds. Credit rates will be subsidized as part of an agreement between banks and the government.

Yandex issued convertible bonds for $1.25 billion, VK - for $400 million, Ozon - for $750 million. In total, this is about $2.4 billion or 144.5 billion rubles. Until February 24, 2022, Russian IT companies were not threatened with simultaneous demands for payments from bondholders. But after the start of Russia's special military operation in Ukraine, foreign exchanges suspended trading in shares and global depositary receipts of Russian companies.

This fact allows holders of convertible bonds to repay them ahead of schedule. To be able to do this, companies must have the right amount of money in their accounts. Yandex admitted that they are not there, publishing a message for shareholders on March 3, 2022. Yandex clarified that even if it can fully fulfill its obligations to repay bonds, without additional financing, the company's liquidity and its ability to fulfill other obligations will be at risk.

A similar message on March 15, 2022 was published by VK after the stop of trading on the London Stock Exchange.

{{quote 'According to the company's estimates, as of March 9, 2022, it had cash and its equivalents in the amount of about $190 million, the company's leaders noted. - Of these, $140 million is stored in foreign currency, of which about 80 million are outside Russia to maintain the working capital of VK's international business. }}

VK clarified that due to the uncertainty associated with the transfer of funds from Russian subsidiaries to its foreign holding company, "there is a possibility that the issuer will not have sufficient liquidity in its holding company to finance payments necessary for redemption if most holders decide to exercise the right to submit bonds for repayment."

On May 30, 2022, Ozon was unable to finance the payment to bondholders who exercised the right to claim their early repayment, as the retailer was unable to transfer the required amount from Ozon's Russian structures to Ozon Holdings PLC. On June 14, 2022, he was facing a technical default. However, on June 1, 2022, it became known that the online retailer agreed with the holders of 35.9% of the bonds to sign an agreement suspending the rights to demand full repayment of bonds (standstill agreement). The document was signed to facilitate the restructuring of the issue of convertible bonds for $750 million with a maturity of 2026^[22].

Thousands of Yandex employees returned to Russia

About 2,500 Yandex employees who left Russia after the start of the Russian military special operation in Ukraine continue to work for a company from other countries. This became known on July 6, 2022 from an interview with the former CEO of Yandex Elena Bunina to The New York Times.

According to her, the pace of departure of Yandex employees abroad is constantly growing, and the gap between those who remained in Russia and those who went abroad is growing within the company.

In May 2022, Meduza (the Ministry of Justice included the publication in the register of foreign media agents), citing its sources, reported that after the start of the special operation, from 18 thousand Yandex employees went abroad from three to five thousand people. At the same time, the company itself claimed that 10% of those who left had already returned to Russia, and Meduza wrote about "thousands of people" in relocation chats.

Yandex allows you to work completely remotely or work from any office or co-working space in 20 cities in Russia and the world, a company representative told Forbes on July 6, 2022.

About 90% continue to work in Russia, and some of the remote ones are engaged in the development of international projects of the company in the countries of their presence. We also continue to build a new Yandex headquarters in Moscow, as we are actively developing business, services and hiring people in Russia, he said.

According to a Forbes source, in early spring 2022, many Yandex employees wanted to work remotely, but by early July more and more workers were returning to Russia.

In April 2022, The Wall Street Journal wrote that about 900 Yandex employees had moved to Turkey. Then the company did not deny this information. They explained that in Yandex you can work remotely for a long time, and the company does not track where remote employees are.^[23]

Preliminary Agreement on Key Bond Buyback Terms

On June 10, 2022, Yandex announced that it had previously agreed with the committee of holders of convertible bonds Yandex N.V. on key conditions for repurchasing bonds.

The redemption of convertible bonds can occur on the following terms: for every 200 thousand dollars of the face value of bonds, Yandex will pay holders 140 thousand dollars and 957 shares of Yandex N.V. Part of the remuneration in the form of shares of Yandex N.V. can be paid after the transfer of bonds as soon as regulatory restrictions give such an opportunity.

If final agreements are reached on the terms of the transaction, Yandex plans to sign a buyout agreement with holders of convertible bonds. After the completion of the redemption procedure, Yandex intends to repay the redeemed bonds in accordance with the terms of the bond loan.

In accordance with the preliminary agreements reached in the event of Yandex's redemption of convertible bonds from at least 75% of bondholders by June 30, 2022, Yandex will have the right to redeem all other convertible bonds on similar terms until July 29, 2022.

"Under special supervision." Yandex renamed the Finnish "daughter"

In May 2022, Yandex announced a change in the name of its subsidiary in Finland. The new name is Global DC Oy. Read more here.

Savinovsky Artem - the new general director of Yandex

On April 14, 2022, Yandex announced the appointment of Artem Savinovsky as the new CEO of the company. Prior to that, he headed the company's media services. Read more here.

Ban in Estonia

On April 11, 2022, a ban on the work of Yandex N.V. (the parent company of Yandex) in Estonia came into force. Internet providers in Estonia will have to restrict access to Yandex N.V. taxi-related websites and applications (Yandex.Go and Yandex.Pro). In addition, app stores (Google Play, App Store and others) are required to limit the download of Yandex applications and stop updating them.

The purpose of the sanctions is to prevent the collection and use of data from Estonian users by Russian special services, the Estonian Ministry of Entrepreneurship and Information Technology reported earlier. Similar statements in Estonia were also made by the Security Police Department and the Data Protection Inspectorate.

Resuming hiring of employees as leading developers

At the end of March 2022, Yandex resumed hiring employees as leading developers. Thus, the company is looking for candidates for the positions of senior backend, frontend and mobile developers. Prior to that, Yandex did not recruit new workers for almost a month. Before the start of Russia's special operation in Ukraine, Yandex had 949 open vacancies.

Yandex decided to resume recruitment, albeit partially, against the background of a massive district of IT specialists from Russia. So, according to the Russian Association of Electronic Communications (RAEC), in February-March 2022, about 50-70 thousand people working in the field of information technology left the country, and in the future this number will only grow (only in April it is expected about 100 thousand people).

Some of the Yandex employees also left - according to Forbes, by mid-March 2022, about 100 people had moved to Armenia alone since the start of the Russian special operation in Ukraine. On March 16, 2022, the publication, citing a Yandex representative, wrote that employees were looking for an additional co-working space for about 80 people there in order to be able to work in one room.

There is no transfer of headquarters or relocation of employees, - assured in Yandex.

According to a company representative, Yandex may pay for the lease of a coworking space in Yerevan. In Israel, Yandex has a representative office, so employees in this country can work in the office, the company added.

According to a Forbes source, Yandex wanted to re-associate employees to Yerevan, but so far (the publication was published on March 16, 2022) this cannot be done "because of a bunch of difficulties." Top managers of Yandex were told that they were travel abroad, nevertheless, subsequently many of them left on private jets, the magazine's source said. Yandex denied this information.^[24]

Tigran Khudaverdyan - the new CEO of Yandex

On March 15, 2022, Yandex announced the appointment of Tigran Khudaverdyan as the new CEO of the company in Russia instead of Elena Bunina, who has held this position since the end of 2017. Read more here.

Yandex warned of the risk of its default

In early 2022, Yandex warned of the risk of its default after the company's shares stopped trading on the stock exchange. The company said that problems could arise if bondholders Yandex N.V. (registered in Holland) demand early repayment of these obligations.

We are talking about bonds at 0.25% with maturity in 2025. The group of companies "does not have the resources necessary to fully repay the notes," Yandex warned.

If companies do not allow the distribution of additional funds from our Russian subsidiaries in favor of our Dutch parent company, Yandex will not have enough resources to repay most of the bonds, the company said.

They said that if Yandex shareholders exercise the right to redeem a significant amount of shares, then without raising additional funding, this will have "a significant negative effect on our short-term financial condition and may affect our ability to fulfill other obligations."

As of February 28, 2022, Yandex had cash in dollars and euros in the amount of about $615 million (of which the equivalent in US dollars in the amount of about $370 million is located outside Russia) and cash and their equivalents in rubles in the amount of about 47 billion rubles.

The representative of Yandex explained to Kommersant that the company warned with its message about "theoretically possible risks, as it is obliged to do."

The company notes that neither it nor its subsidiaries fell under the Western sanctions that were imposed against Russia. However, she pointed out that companies from a number of countries have suspended cooperation with partners in Russia. Yandex indicated that its capacity will allow it to continue operating as usual, at least for the next 12-18 months.^[25]

Stopping trading in shares on the American stock exchange

At the end of February 2022, the American exchanges Nasdaq and NYSE stopped trading in shares of Yandex, Ozon, MTS, Mechel and Cian.ru after the introduction of US sanctions against Russia. Read more here.

Pay additional salary to employees, stop recruiting personnel

On February 28, 2022, it became known about Yandex's decision to pay employees an additional salary and stop recruiting personnel against the background of the situation around Ukraine. It is noted that all employees, including interns and those on probation, will receive bonus payments.

The hiring of new employees has been suspended for two weeks. At the same time, the company does not plan cuts.

On February 27, 2022, Yandex Managing Director Tigran Khudaverdyan said that the company's employees could return to remote work, since "many are now morally difficult and would like to be with their family more."

Speak and support each other. Personal communication with friends, family and loved ones is best. Do not close and do not try to worry about everything on your own, "he wrote in a letter to employees.

Another "organizational moment" that the top manager describes in the letter is that at the upcoming Khural (as the company calls meetings of employees with management), "the problem of falling employee incomes" will be discussed.

From February 21 to February 27, 2022, the value of Yandex shares on Nasdaq almost halved, to about $20 per share. About 60% of the company's employees participate in a long-term incentive program with options. The company does not disclose what share of the capital is reserved for such an incentive program.

According to him, by the RBC end of 2021, the headcount of Yandexd N.V., the parent company for the Yandex group, was 18,004 people, which is 52% more than a year earlier. The growth was due to the hiring of employees to develop search and portal, business in the field, e-commerce as well as support the scaling of taxi and car-sharing cloud business services, fintech media services, etc. In the fourth quarter of 2021 alone, the company increased its staff by 5%.^[26]

Yandex refused to install a single Mediascope audience counter on its sites

Yandex"" refused to install the recommended Roskomnadzor single audience counter on its sites Mediascope and will independently transmit data to the meter. The company announced this on February 15, 2022. More. here

Yandex will allocate 1.5 billion rubles to promote Russian software on the Internet as part of an amicable agreement with the FAS

Yandex will transfer 1.5 billion rubles to the Russian Information Technology Development Fund (RFRIT), the funds will be used to promote Russian software products on the Internet. This was announced on January 19, 2022 by the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS).

The transfer of funds is planned as part of the conclusion of a settlement agreement in the trial and the termination of the antimonopoly case between the FAS, Yandex and the applicants in the case - companies that previously complained about Yandex's abuse of the dominant position in search results, follows from the message of the antimonopoly service. Among the applicants in question were Avito, Wildberries, Profi.ru, 2GIS and other players in the market.

The reason for the end of the dispute was Yandex's recognition of the validity of the warning issued by the FAS and the implementation of its provisions, the antimonopoly service says. In particular, as a result of the interaction of the companies participating in the antimonopoly case, the policy, conditions and technical requirements for the integration of partners into the Yandex search engine have been published. Their requirements are open and uniform for all market participants, including the company's own services.

We welcome the constructive positions in the negotiation process of the FAS, Yandex and the applicants and, as a result, the conclusion of an amicable agreement. Now the fund needs to quickly launch a new service for IT startups, and, thus, ensure the seamless receipt of support measures by companies: from acceleration, grants for the development of projects to the launch of products on the market and their promotion, - said the Deputy Head of the Ministry of Digital Development RossiiMaksim Parshin.

The settlement confirms Yandex's compliance with all the requirements of the FAS warning issued in 20.02.2021 and provides for additional obligations of the company aimed at maintaining competition, in particular: providing Yandex with full access to the Enriched Answers search engine technology. With the participation of the coalition and the FAS, Yandex has developed a set of internal procedures and policies that regulate non-discriminatory access to Enriched Answers technology. These procedures describe the procedure and time frame for connecting independent services to the OP, the criteria that the partner and its content must meet, the procedure for analyzing partner complaints and the audit of Yandex's implementation of the agreed procedures. All agreements are recorded by Yandex in the relevant policies and documents that are public and available to everyone for review. The rules have been in place since the settlement was signed.

Andrei Styskin, director of the Yandex search, advertising and cloud services business group, noted that the Russian Internet industry has taken an important step towards maturity and the ability to independently resolve its issues - through self-regulation. The new RFRIT program will provide grants to small IT companies to promote their goods and services on the Internet. This will be an additional impetus for the development of the digital economy, the representative of Yandex believes.

We observe an interesting precedent - a non-standard and beautiful decision, when the contribution of the participant in the settlement agreement is transferred to the support and development of the IT industry. The Russian Fund for the Development of Information Technologies has shown the effectiveness of work and will undoubtedly be able to offer Russian companies an effective tool for their promotion, "the Ministry of Digital Development Valentin Makarov, president of the Russoft association, as saying.

The FAS says that the antimonopoly service will monitor the implementation of the settlement agreement, as well as regularly analyze the correctness of the company's search engine. Yandex also undertakes to regularly provide information for such monitoring to the department. An independent audit of the impartiality of ranking and display of data in search results will be carried out annually.

2021

Arkady Volozh agreed not to sell Yandex shares until 2024

In early December 2021, it became known about the decision of the founder and CEO of Yandex Arkady Volozh not to sell shares of the B-class company until the end of 2023. We are talking about the extension of the blocking agreement, which Volozh and his family trust) entered into in December 2019, according to a press release. Read more here.

Plan of authorization implementation in services via ESIA

In Yandex services, within the framework of a partnership with Ministry of Digital Development, it will be possible to authorize through ESIA, that is, through Public services. This connection method will be optional - the user will be able to refuse to use it. In the future, Ministry of Digital Development plans to introduce authorization through ESIA and in other web services used in Russia. This became known on November 23, 2021.

The current head of the Russian Ministry of Digital Development Maksut Shadayev announced the imminent introduction of ESIA into Yandex services.

As of November 23, 2021, neither the Ministry of Digital Industry nor Yandex disclosed the timing of the integration of the ESIA entry into the IT giant system.

Why exactly Ministry of Digital Development is seeking the integration of ESIA into third-party authorization systems remains unknown. This may be due to the initiative of the Russian authorities. In the spring of 2021, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin signed Decree of the Russian Government No. 453 of March 27, 2021 on conducting an experiment to authorize users of third-party sites in their accounts through the ESIA.

The decree prescribes to begin an experiment on the introduction of ESIA into third-party sites from April 1, 2021. The project should be completed on July 1, 2022, but it is possible that its validity period will be extended.

Authorization in Yandex through Public services, that is, we can say, according to the passport, will not be mandatory. This was assured by representatives of Yandex^[27].

Inclusion in the Matter Smart Home Unified Protocol Development Working Group

On November 23, 2021, Yandex joined the international working group on the development of Matter - a single protocol for the smart home. This protocol will unify smart home systems, make them more accessible and user-friendly.

The initiators of the creation of a single protocol were companies, and, and the platform Apple Google Amazon for developers was provided by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (formerly Zigbee Alliance). The task of the working group is to create a standard that will take into account the specifics of different and countries act around the world. This will help simplify and reduce the cost of producing smart devices, make them compatible with different services and As a voice assistants. result, smart home systems will become more affordable, convenient and enter the daily life of many people.

We see great potential for smart home for development in the Russian market. In particular, over the past year, the number of Yandex smart home users has more than quadrupled. The fact that global giants are actively investing in Matter suggests that they understand and believe that the future is behind this standard. And we want to be involved in that process. That is why it was important for us to join the Matter development working group, "said Sergei Melnik, head of Yandex smart devices.

The working group for November 2021 includes more than 300 companies from around the world. It is expected that devices based on the protocol will appear in 2022.

Release of the first batch of Yandex servers

On November 19, 2021, Yandex announced the release of the first batch of servers that the company produces together with partners. The equipment is based on a fourth-generation server developed by Yandex. Such servers are used in data centers to expand the Yandex.Cloud cloud platform and in Yandex supercomputers.

By November 19, 2021, the first batch of servers is being tested in the Yandex infrastructure. In 2022, a joint venture between Yandex, Lanita, Gigabyte and VTB plans to release similar servers under the Openyard brand for sale to other companies.

It is claimed that servers are designed to run in large data centers that require high performance and energy efficiency. Openyard became the first server manufacturer in Russia to use new AMD Epyc Milan server processors along with Intel Ice Lake chips.

As stated in the press release, the released servers do not require active cooling systems in data centers and can operate at a temperature of + 40 ° C, which reduces spending on electricity and infrastructure support in the data center. This can be seen on the example of Yandex data centers in Vladimir and Mäntsylä, using fourth-generation Yandex servers, the Internet company said in a statement.

The first batch of servers was released at the ALT Master contract production in Zelenograd. It is planned that in 2022. The joint venture will launch its own plant for the production of server equipment near Ryazan. It will release servers, storage systems, gateways and smart device components.

At the first stage, the joint venture invests more than 1 billion rubles in production. The joint venture implies the opening of a development center that designs technical products and offers them for sale abroad.

Creation of an advisory board for the development of the company's ecosystem

At the end of October 2021, Yandex announced the creation of an advisory council for the development of the ecosystem. This initiative is aimed at promoting the formation of self-regulation of the open ecosystem of Yandex with the participation of its partners and users. Read more here.

Launch of the Segalovich Foundation

Yandex on September 13, 2021 informed TAdviser about the launch of the Segalovich Foundation. The Foundation named after co-founder of the company Ilya Segalovich will unite Yandex non-profit educational projects, as well as support organizations and public initiatives that are engaged in the development of affordable and high-quality education in the field of mathematics and IT. The total amount of grants in 2022 will amount to 250 million rubles. Read more here.

Yandex revealed the details of the "largest ever" DDoS attack Mēris

On September 9, 2021, "" revealed details Yandex DDoS-attacks that the company called "the largest in history." It is reported that the cyber attack was carried out using a new (botnet Mēris "plague" in Latvian). More. here

Yandex was subjected to the largest cyber attack in the history of Runet

On September 7, 2021, it became known that a few days earlier, Yandex"" was subjected to the largest in history. RuNet to cyber attackTo sheets A source in the company told about the incident. The information was confirmed by Yandex and an American company that Cloudflare specializes in repelling cyber attacks and cooperates with Yandex.

The official representative of Yandex confirmed the information about the attack, which was reflected by the network infrastructure and the system for filtering unwanted requests. The company clarified that "the attack did not affect the operation of services, user data was not affected."

One of the newspaper's sources said that the company was unable to contain the attack, as well as that hackers continue to attempt an attack by September 8, 2021. Employees declined to disclose details of the incident, citing an internal review. One of the interlocutors noted that we are talking about a threat to infrastructure on a national scale.

According to Alexander Lyamin, CEO of Qrator Labs, which protects information infrastructure, attackers are using a new botnet built on the network equipment of a Baltic manufacturer. The speed of cyber attacks that he conducts is several times higher than a few years ago. The botnet spreads through a vulnerability in firmware and already has up to hundreds of thousands of infected devices. "

Another expert in the field of information security told Vedomosti that we are talking about routers of the Latvian company MikroTik - the equipment of this manufacturer could be used to organize a new botnet.

An interlocutor in a large Internet company noted that the use of vulnerable devices is a common way to organize DDoS attacks.

Some services could suffer. Large DDoS attacks lead to the fact that large Internet services can degrade, he said.[28]

Yandex satisfies 4 out of 5 requests from the authorities about user data

In early September 2021, it became known that Yandex satisfies 4 out of 5 requests from the authorities about user data. This was reported by the press service of the company.

In January-June 2021, Yandex received 19,600 requests from government agencies for the disclosure of user data, of which 4153, or 21%, were rejected. Compared to the same period in 2020, the number of requests increased by 27%. In the first half of 2020, Yandex received 15,376 requests from the authorities regarding user data.

Most requests in the first half of 2021 fell on Yandex.Mail"" (6445), of which 662 were rejected (about 10%). Quantitatively, the most rejected requests for users Yandex.Taxi"" (2295 out of 8583 or 27%).

The company stressed that they take into account only requests received officially, according to the procedure prescribed by law. Requests received through unofficial channels, for example, by e-mail or by phone, do not receive an answer and are not taken into account in statistics, Yandex noted.

The largest share of the company's failures fell on Yandex ID - 304 out of 534 (57%) requests registered in the first half of 2021. 38% of requests for Yandex.Verticals user data (76 out of 201) and 30% of requests for Yandex.Food users (516 out of 1744) were also not satisfied.

Of the requests for data of media service users, 33% were denied (23 out of 70), of the requests for geodata, 13% were not satisfied (18 out of 134). Yandex.Drive did not satisfy 9% of requests about its users (147 out of 1589).

Yandex also revealed statistics of appeals under the law on the "right to oblivion," which obliges search engines to remove links to illegal, inaccurate or irrelevant information about the applicant from search results. In the first half of the year, Yandex received 4405 such appeals due to irrelevance (according to the applicant), 3069 - with unreliability, 3113 - with violation of laws. Some statements may belong to several categories, so it is wrong to summarize these figures, Yandex noted^[29]

Yandex has allocated the logistics of Yandex.Market as a separate company

Yandex"" allocated logistics Yandex.Market"" in a separate company - LLC Market.Transactions"." This became known in mid-August 2021. here More.

Yandex has registered a company in Britain for a food and grocery delivery service

On July 22, 2021, Yandex announced the registration in Britain of a new company Deli International Limited, through which it is planned to develop an analogue of Yandex.Lavki in the country under the international brand Yango Deli. Read more here.

Initiation of a case on the fact of creating discriminatory conditions in the search market on the Internet

On April 13, 2021, it became known that FAS it had opened a case against, Yandex which did not comply with the warning of the antimonopoly authority to stop creating discriminatory conditions in the search market on the network. "Internet

On February 20, 2021, the FAS Russia issued a warning to Yandex LLC, according to which the organization must provide equal conditions for demonstrating services on the pages of the search engine by April 1, 2021, including for market participants - competitors of the Yandex group. However, the warning was not executed.

According to the FAS Russia, Yandex LLC provides Yandex group services with preferential opportunities to promote (attract the attention of users) services in the Yandex search engine. Such actions can lead to the creation of discriminatory conditions of activity in related to the search for commodity markets.

As part of the consideration of the case, the antimonopoly authority will investigate possible anti-competitive practices to promote the services of the Yandex LLC group in search results, and will also assess the consequences that such practices led (could lead) to.

If the fact of violation and restriction of competition from the actions of Yandex LLC is established, the company may be sentenced to a revolving fine from the amount of revenue on the market^[30].

Investing $131.2 million in multiple IPOs involving SPACs

In January-March 2021, Yandex invested $131.2 million in several IPOs carried out with the involvement of special SPAC companies. The Russian Internet giant announced this in documents sent to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and published on April 1, 2021. Read more here.

Internet companies complained about Yandex's dominant position in Internet search

On March 18, 2021, it became known that 20 Russian Internet companies signed an open letter expressing dissatisfaction with Yandex's anti-competitive position and advocating equal opportunities in the online search market.

{{quote 'We, Russian Internet companies, support the decision of the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia, which obliges Yandex to eliminate privileges when promoting its own services in its search.

Why is this important?

In today's digital economy, the consumer faces a wide variety of goods and services and competition from their suppliers. The choice of such a supplier - an online store or service - is carried out by most users using search engines. If all suppliers of goods and services are on equal terms, then the consumer has the opportunity to find an optimal offer in price and quality.

It is this principle of equality of conditions, according to the FAS, that Yandex is trying to violate. It controls the search engine and in many categories of goods and services provides its own services with advantages over competitors. The consumer sees primarily the Yandex service, and not the best among those available on the market.

Participants in the Internet industry are confident that fair competition is the most important element of the economic development of society and the state. Thanks to competition, a developed market for Internet services has formed in Russia, and its annual intensive growth proves the demand and trust in it from consumers.

We believe that abuse of dominance is unacceptable and that users of search engines have every right to receive objective information about all variety of goods and services - including using tools that are equally accessible to all market participants. We are convinced that the interests of consumers, businesses, and states in this matter coincide.

We believe that the result of the warning issued by the FAS Russia to Yandex should be the establishment of equal opportunities for fair competition in online search. We urge Yandex to fulfill the requirements presented by the FAS, and government agencies and the business community to monitor their implementation.}}

In today's digital economy, the consumer faces a wide variety of goods and services and competition from their suppliers. The choice of such a supplier - an online store or service - is carried out by most users using search engines. If all suppliers of goods and services are on equal terms, then the consumer has the opportunity to find an optimal offer in price and quality, - said in a letter (quoted by RIA Novosti).

This principle of equality of conditions is trying to violate Yandex, which, according to the authors of the message, controls the search engine and in many categories of goods and services provides its own services with advantages over competitors. -- >

The letter notes that earlier the FAS obliged Yandex to eliminate privileges in a month to promote its services in the search market. By March 18, 2021, this period has almost expired, but the situation has not changed. "Sorcerers" (interactive responses to user requests that occupy up to 100% of the screen on smartphones) still work for the IT giant, and other services cannot access them, Internet companies said.

In February 2021, the FAS obliged Yandex to stop giving advantages to its search services and gave a month to execute the decision. Yandex said that they did not agree with the decision of the FAS and added that some of the requirements of the body had already been implemented in the search.

The following companies signed a letter criticizing Yandex:

Avito, Drom, "Кассир.ру," "Туту.ру," "Cian.ru," IVI, 2GIS, Profi.ru, YouDo.com, Internet Video Association, PROMT, OneTwoTrip, YAKlass, SkyEng, "Zoon.ru," "Autotek."^[31]

The government has chosen Yandex IT projects for a special legal regime

In mid-March 2021, it became known about the IT projects of MTS and Yandex, which were chosen by the Government of the Russian Federation to provide them with a special legal regime. Read more here.

Lawsuit for 529 million rubles from TeleSport Group with the support of La Liga

On March 12, 2021, it became known that La Liga supported another lawsuit by TeleSport Group against Yandex in the case of protecting the exclusive rights to broadcast matches of the Spanish Football League in the amount of 529 million rubles. Read more here.

Arkady Volozh sells 29 thousand shares of Yandex for $1.9 million

In early March 2021, it became known about the sale of 29,180 shares Yandex of "," owned by the co-founder of the company Arkady Volozhu and his family trust Lastar Trust. This is stated in the documents that Yandex provided to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (). SEC More. here

Data leakage of thousands of mailboxes, access to them was leaked by a Yandex employee

On February 12, 2021, Yandex reported a data leak of almost 5 thousand users. Access to electronic mailboxes was leaked by a company employee.

During a regular check by the Yandex security service, the fact of an internal leak was revealed. During an internal investigation, it was discovered that an employee provided unauthorized access to users' mailboxes, the company's press service said.

They clarified that the actions that led to the internal leak were carried out by one of the three system administrators who had the access rights necessary to perform the work tasks to provide technical support for the service. As a result of his actions, 4,887 mailboxes were compromised.

Yandex said that unauthorized access to compromised boxes has already been blocked, and users have been sent notifications about the need to change their password.

By February 12, 2021, the company is conducting an internal investigation and has already appealed to law enforcement agencies. She intends to revise the work processes of employees with administrative rights of this level of access.

This will help minimize the impact of the human factor on the security of user data... We are very sorry for what happened and apologize to the users who suffered due to this incident, - noted in Yandex.

This is not the first leak of data from Yandex users. At the end of 2020, it became known about the appearance in the public domain of the Yandex.Taxi driver database. It has 23,426 lines. The file includes the drivers' full name, phone numbers, numbers, stamps, models and color of cars, as well as the names of taxi companies and the connected tariff. At the same time, some of the information was outdated.^[32]

2020

Yandex for the first time published statistics on the transfer of user data to the authorities

On October 26, 2020, Yandex first published statistics on the transfer of user data to the authorities. In the first half of the year, government agencies, including the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the FSB and other law enforcement agencies, sent more than 15,300 appeals to the company. 84% of them (or about 12,900 requests) were satisfied by Yandex, and in other cases refused to provide data.

Requests were received for the following services:

• Yandex.Mail and Yandex.Passport - 8867 received/rejected 1124 (refusal rate - 13%);
• Yandex.Taxi - 5280/1167 (22%);
• Yandex.Drive - 706/58 (8%);
• Yandex.Eda - 300/54 (18%);
• Verticals (Yandex.Real Estate, Yandex.Work, Авто.ру) - 95/25 (26%);
• Geo-services - 41/17 (41%);
• Media services - 14/2 (14%);
• The rest is 73/21 (29%).

We disclose data on those services and directions of the company that receive the largest number of requests. In addition, for most services, requests relate to the issuance of data from Yandex.Passport, which is reflected in statistics, the Yandex report explains.

Russian companies must issue information about users according to the law: law enforcement agencies, within the framework of operational-search activities, can request information, and the company must provide it - such provisions, for example, are in the laws "On Police" and "On Operational-Search Activities."

If the company refuses to provide data upon request, it may face a fine, and in some cases criminal liability for the manager and suspension of the activities of the entire enterprise. In addition, as specified in the statement of Yandex, under Art. 161 of the Criminal Procedure Code of Russia, the company cannot tell users that their data is provided to government agencies. Users are not warned about requests, since this is regulated by Art. 161 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.^[33]

Yandex changed its mind about buying Tinkoff Bank

On October 16, 2020, it became known that Yandex and TCS Group (Tinkoff) stopped negotiations on the possible purchase by Yandex of 100% of Tinkoff's share capital.

Unfortunately, Yandex failed to agree on the final terms of the transaction with the main shareholders of Tinkoff, in connection with which the parties made a mutual decision to end the negotiations. We thank the Tinkoff team for their productive joint work in the negotiation process, - noted in the text of the Yandex message.

Read more here.

Agreement on the purchase of Tinkoff Bank

Yandex has previously agreed to purchase TCS Group (the head structure of Tinkoff Bank). Information about this was published on September 22 on the website of the London Stock Exchange^[34]. As noted, the transaction can be paid for with money and shares of Yandex. Read more here.

Trademark Registration for Financial Services

In August 2020, Yandex sent applications for the registration of Yabank, YAKredit, YABirzha, YABrocker, YAVtreasure, YAKapital, YAStrakhovka, YASchet, YAPortfel, YASberezhenie, YASeif, YaAlev, Yaiyav, Yav

Raising $1.06 billion from investors

At the end of June 2020, Yandex announced the closure of a public and private offering of 21.523 million class A shares for a total amount of about $1.06 billion.

"The total number of new Class A shares issued in a public offering and private offering is 21,522,840 Class A shares, and total gross revenue is approximately $1.06 billion before discounts and underwriting fees, placement agent fees and estimated total offering costs," it said.

The sole organizer of the public offering and simultaneous private placement of the company's shares was Goldman Sachs. Investors in the parallel private placement were VTB Capital, Ervington Investments Limited, the ultimate beneficiary of which is Roman Abramovich; and Treliscope Limited, whose ultimate beneficiaries are Alexander Abramov and Alexander Frolov.

Yandex raised $400 million from an additional placement of shares

On June 25, 2020, Yandex raised $400 million as part of an accelerated public offering, selling more than 8 million new Class A shares at a price of $49.25 apiece. This is twice the planned SPO volume.

In addition to $400 million, in order to raise funds for business development, the company will sell $600 million worth of shares to three large private investors: VTB Capital, investment company Roman Abramovich, as well as investment company Alexander Abramov and Alexander Frolov. Thus, instead of the initial $800 million, Yandex's raised capital will amount to $1 billion.

In addition, Yandex provided the underwriter, Goldman Sachs, with a 30-day option to purchase up to 1.22 million Class A shares at a price of $49.25 apiece .

As previously reported by Yandex, investments are attracted "to finance further business growth and strategic initiatives, including online trading."

The value of Yandex shares during trading  on the Moscow Exchange has updated its historical maximum. By 16:45 Moscow time on June 25, 2020, the value of securities was 3473 rubles, which is 3.41% more than the day before.

According to Vasily Karpunin, head of the department of stock market experts at BCS Broker, the growth of securities is largely due to the recouping of the dynamics of Yandex securities on the Nasdaq exchange  - in June 24, 2020, there was a day off on the Moscow Exchange, and in the United States, the holding quotes added 2.6%. Much more significant support for Yandex and the industry as a whole is provided by news about a decrease in the premium rate for IT companies from 14% to 7.6% and income tax from 20% to 3%.

These measures have largely led to the revaluation of Yandex shares that we have seen in recent days, Karpunin said.

According to Freedom Finance analyst Valery Emelyanov, foreign investors received a signal: the company will develop through private attraction, that is, there will be no nationalization and merging with the state-owned Sberbank.^[35]

Yandex predicted losses for its business due to coronavirus crisis

On June 23, 2020, Yandex published a copy of the preliminary financial results for the 2nd quarter sent to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The company expects to receive a net loss of 3 billion to 4.5 billion rubles. A year ago, during the same period, Yandex received a net profit of 3.4 billion rubles. The decrease in this indicator is mainly due to a decrease in income from core activities and foreign exchange losses, explained in the message of^[36].

Yandex predicts that its revenue at the end of the quarter will remain at the level of the same period in 2019 or decrease by 2%, to 40.6 billion rubles.

The estimated reduction in our consolidated revenue compared to the same period in 2019 is mainly the result of the negative impact of business activity restrictions related to coronavirus on our business areas related to advertising and passenger transportation. The decline here was partially compensated by the acceleration of growth in our FoodTech businesses and media services, - explains Yandex in the message.

The revenue of the search and portal direction may decrease by an average of 10% at the end of the quarter, to 25-26 billion rubles. One of the key reasons for this in the company is called the impact of the epidemic on the advertising budgets of customers.

And the turnover of Yandex.Taxi, which, in addition to the taxi business, also includes food delivery, will amount to 11.9-12.3 billion rubles, which is 37.3% higher than in the second quarter of 2019.

Adjusted EBITDA may decrease by an average of 40.8%, to 7.5-8 billion rubles. This will be affected by a decrease in revenue growth rates, as well as ongoing investments in the development of new businesses, including Yandex.Lavka, a drone division and media services, are expected in Yandex.

One-time expenses of Yandex related to the spread of the new coronavirus in the 2nd quarter amounted to 227 million rubles. They are represented mainly by the cost of helping drivers and couriers, as well as the purchase of masks and disinfectants.

In a preliminary prospectus for a new share issue, also sent to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the company notes that in the 1st quarter of 2020, coronavirus-related restrictions affected its financial results only in the last two weeks of March. Then Yandex began to observe a slowdown in growth in its businesses related to advertising and passenger transportation - a trend that lasted in the 2nd quarter of 2020. Despite the fact that the overall search activity of users has increased, there is a decrease in commercial requests^[37].

Currently, the full consequences of covid-19 are unknown, they continue to develop. Our past results may not be indicative in relation to our future results, - says the prospectus issued by Yandex.

I must say that Yandex was the first among large Russian Internet companies to publish a forecast for financial results for Q2 2020. Earlier, following the results of the 1st quarter, the operating and financial director of Yandex, Greg Abovsky, noted that the 2nd quarter would be more difficult.

Before the epidemic, Yandex expected that by the end of 2020 its consolidated revenue would amount to 214-221 billion rubles, which is 22-26% more compared to 2019.

Participation in the preparation of a plan for the development of legislation for unmanned vehicles

and Sberbank Yandex"" together with "" and GAZ Group PJSC "" KAMAZ prepared a plan for improving the regulatory framework in the development of automated transport means. The plan includes the implementation of about 30 technological and regulatory measures for a phased transition from testing to full operation of highly and fully automated vehicles. This was announced on April 30, 2020 by Sberbank. More. here

Transfer of car sharing to a separate business

On April 15, 2020, it became known about the creation of Yandex.Carshering, in which Yandex allocated its business to provide short-term car rental services. According to Interfax, citing data from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, the new subsidiary was registered on April 3. Read more here.

Inclusion in the list of backbone companies in Russia

On April 3, 2020, it became known that the Government of the Russian Federation included Yandex in the list of backbone companies. In total, 646 organizations were on the list. In addition to Yandex, the list includes such IT companies as SKB Kontur, 1C, Мэйл.ру. Read more here.

Arkady Volozh decided to sell part of Yandex shares

In January 2020, it became known about the decision of Arkady Volozh to sell more than 2 million shares of Yandex. The co-founder of the Internet company attributed this move to the lack of dividends and regular salaries. Read more here.

2019

Revenue growth by 39% to RUB 175.39 billion

Yandex completed 2019 with revenue growing by 37%, which amounted to 175.39 billion rubles. Excluding Yandex.Market, turnover increased by 39%.

In the advertising business, the company earned 121.7 billion rubles for the year (an increase of 20%). 96.3 billion rubles of them fall on advertising on Yandex's own sites, the rest - on the advertising network.

At the end of 2019, Yandex.Taxi's revenue (this includes online taxi ordering services, foodtech direction, as well as the direction of development of unmanned vehicles) almost doubled and reached 37.9 billion rubles (this is approximately 22% of the company's total turnover). The company explains this by an increase in the number of trips and good results in the corporate taxi segment, the growth of the foodtech direction.

In the segment of ad services (Авто.ру, Yandex.Real Estate, Yandex.Rabota), the company raised 3.7 billion rubles at the end of 2018, which is 81% more than in the previous year.

Media services (KinoPoisk, Yandex.Music, Yandex.Afisha and Yandex.Teleprogram) in 2019 brought Yandescu revenue of 3.9 billion rubles, which is 103% more than a year ago.

The so-called experimental areas (Yandex.Zen, Yandex.Cloud, Yandex.Health, Yandex.Drive and Yandex Data Factory) showed revenue growth of 168%, to 15.1 billion rubles.

Yandex's net profit in 2019 was equal to 11.2 billion rubles, down 75% compared to 2018. Adjusted net profit of Yandex at the end of 2019, excluding the results of Yandex.Market, increased by 6%, to 23.5 billion rubles. 

The report also reported that by the end of 2019, Yandex.Music had 3.1 million users, and Yandex's share in the Russian search engines market grew to 57.5% from 56.6% in December 2018.^[38]

Discovery with FPMI of a laboratory for research in the field of computer science

On December 9, 2019, the Fiztech School of Applied Mathematics and Informatics of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology announced the opening, together with Yandex, of a laboratory that will engage in research in the field of computer science. The laboratory will work on the development of machine learning technologies, computer vision, information search, recommendation systems, natural language processing and machine translation. Read more here.

The emergence of own stores

At the end of November 2019, Yandex"" had its own stores selling the company's devices: smart speakers Yandex.Station"" and "Yandex.Station Mini," the Yandex.Module media player, equipment for smart home and branded products, for example, clothing.

As Kommersant writes with reference to the press service of Yandex, the company launched points of sale in the format of "islets" (area - 1.4 sq. M.) In shopping centers "Troika" in Moscow, "Okhta Mall" in St. Petersburg and "Rainbow" in Yekaterinburg. This project was launched in collaboration with ProStore.

"own stores have

Yandex intends to expand its network of stores in 2020, but the company does not say how many points are planned to be opened.

To become noticeable in this format at the level of million-plus cities, the company needs to open 150-200 "islets," said Mikhail Burmistrov, General Director of Infoline Analytics. This only during the first year may require 200-300 million rubles, taking into account rent and salaries, the expert estimates.

In his opinion, renting "islets" can cost Yandex about 100 thousand rubles a month for Moscow and 60 thousand rubles in the regions. Evgenia Khakberdieva, director of the retail real estate department at Knight Frank, calls a higher figure - from 300 to 500 thousand rubles.

Mikhail Burmistrov doubts the payback of the project, however, in his opinion, the main task of Yandex is to attract the audience to its ecosystem.

Yandex will find itself well in the niche of impulse purchases and gifts. But it's too early to talk about the image effect of such "islets" for the company after opening three points, "warns Data Insight partner (Data Insight) Fedor Virin.

"Islets" may become a driver of growth in sales of Yandex products, but retailers will still occupy a significant share in sales, believes David Borzilov, vice president of sales at Svyaznoy.^[39]

Creation of a management company - Public Interest Fund

On November 18, 2019, Yandex announced the introduction of a new management structure for the company. In accordance with the changes, which was approved by the board of directors, a non-profit Public Interests Foundation is being created, to which part of the functions are transferred. Read more here.

Huawei's refusal to replace Google services with Yandex applications in smartphones

Huawei is not going to replace Google services with Yandex applications in its smartphones. Jaime Gonzalo, vice president of Huawei's mobile services in Europe, spoke about this in an interview with RIA Novosti at the end of September 2019. Read more here.

US presidential candidate owned Yandex shares, but kept silent about it

On September 6, 2019, it became known that the presidential candidate USA Cory Booker owned a share Yandex in at the time of running for the US Senate in 2013. More. here

Reuters: Western intelligence hacked Yandex to spy on users

On June 27, 2019, Western intelligence hacked Yandex to spy on accounts. The company itself confirmed the attacks, but assured that the user data was saved. Read more here.

Allocating 20% of capital to motivate employees

On June 12, 2019, it became known about the expansion of the employee motivation program at Yandex. The company is ready to spend up to 20% of the capital on retaining specialists.

By the end of March 2019, 15% of Yandex's capital was allocated for employee remuneration, of which about 2% (6.6 million class A shares) were not distributed. The board of directors proposed to allocate another 16.2 million such shares to the motivation program so that the company could use 7% of the unallocated capital for this, and the entire motivation program would grow to 20% of the capital (a total of 325.7 million shares of classes A and B were issued), Vedomosti writes with reference to the company's documents for the annual meeting of shareholders.

Yandex spokesman Ilya Grabovsky told the publication that by the end of 2019, the program should affect about 50% of the company's employees. All employees can qualify for remuneration, the program is tied to the position of each of them and the assessment of work results.

According to Yandex's calculations, with such changes in the motivation program, shares should be enough for 2-3 years. However, this is only a preliminary estimate, since reserved shares can be used at different rates depending on their value, the amount of remuneration in competing companies, recruitment and other factors.

To implement the motivation program, Yandex buys shares from the exchange. So, in 2018, the company bought 4.8 million class A securities, paying about $150 million for this package. In 2016-2017, no share buybacks were made.

Yandex also allows an additional issue - in the section with an assessment of the potential erosion of capital. In the case of an additional issue of shares, the shares of shareholders may be diluted by 4.6%, which the board of directors considers "acceptable."^[40]

Refusal to provide the FSB with encryption keys

On June 4, 2019, it became known that the Federal Security Service (FSB) demanded keys from Yandex to decrypt messages from users of Yandex.Mail and Yandex.Disk services. The agency requested the data a few months ago, but the company did not provide it, although, by law, it had to do so within 10 days.

According to the "Spring Law," the FSB can demand encryption keys from any services from the register of information distribution organizers (ARI), that is, services with a messaging function. Yandex.Mail and Yandex.Disk are included in this list. For refusing to fulfill a similar requirement of the FSB since the spring of 2018, the Telegram messenger has been blocked in Russia.

According to RBC, Yandex refused to transfer encryption keys to the FSB, as this could jeopardize user passwords. The company fears cash losses and an outflow of users to competing services due to cooperation with the security forces, an informed source told the publication.

The interlocutors say that the special service requires session keys from Yandex, which allow you to find out the login and password from the mail, as well as monitor the user's actions in the services. For example, in Yandex.Disk you can see who downloaded what.

The FSB did not comment on the information about the request. A spokesman for Yandex said the company was operating in accordance with the law.

Experts interviewed by the publication consider it unlikely to repeat the Telegram scenario in the case of Yandex. Most likely, some kind of compromise will be found, but the authorities may restrict access to the company's services for several days so that it becomes more negotiable.

The Google FSB requirements for similar services by the beginning of June 2019 do not apply, since Gmail they are either not included in the register of organizers Google Drive of the dissemination of information.^[41]

Cooperation with Isbank in the field of payment for online purchases

On May 30, 2019, Yandex announced that millions of Russians will be able to pay for purchases in rubles on tourist online sites in Turkey. This became possible thanks to the cooperation of Yandex.Cash and the Turkish bank Isbank. In Turkey, in May 2019, more than 10,000 Internet sites work with him. As part of this cooperation, Isbank will connect partner companies to accept payments through Yandex.Cash. Read more here.

Expansion of cooperation with Rambler in the field of online advertising

Yandex and Rambler Group on January 10, 2019 announced the expansion of cooperation in the field of Internet advertising. The parties extended the agreement on Yandex's placement of advertising on media resources that are part of the Rambler Group. Along with the placement of banner ads, the agreement also includes various options for monetizing video content on Rambler Group sites. Read more here.

2018: Participation in the creation of the Association of Big Data Market Participants

On October 16, 2018, MegaFon, VK (formerly Mail.ru Group), oneFactor, Tinkoff Bank, Yandex and Sberbank established the Association of Big Data Market Participants. Anna Serebryanikova, operating di⁠rektor of MegaFon, was elected President of the organization. The Board of the Association included representatives of all founding companies. The main goal of the organization is to create conditions for the development of technologies and products in the field of big data in Russia. Read more here.

2017

The head of Yandex and top managers of Kaspersky received Maltese citizenship

The head and co-founder of Yandex, Arkady Volozh, became a citizen of Malta. This was reported by RBC, which studied the list of new citizens of the country, published in the newspaper of the Maltese government Gazzetta tal-Gvern ta "Malta^[42].

In addition to the actual ​​Arkadiya of Yuryevich Volozh, Timofey Arkadyevich Volozh, Anna-Esther Arkadyevna Volozh, Sifra Leibovna Volozh and Yuri Abramovich Volozh are mentioned in the list of new citizens of Malta.

RBC recalls that in the press Timofey Volozh was called the son of Arkady Volozh, and Anna-Esther - his daughter.

From the biography of Arkady Volozh it is known that his parents are named Yuri Abramovich and Sofya Lvovna.

Representatives of Yandex explained Volozh's appearance of Maltese citizenship by the fact that he travels a lot on the company's affairs, and the presence of a European passport allows him to use a visa-free regime. However, "as before, he remains a Russian citizen and fulfills all the requirements of Russian legislation," said a representative of Yandex.

The largest sites monitor users through Yandex tools

More than a thousand sites out of the first 10 thousand in the Alexa rating use tools that can track the keystrokes and movements of the user's mouse. One of the most popular tools belongs to Yandex. It remembers all the data entered by the user on the page, including credit card numbers and codes on their back^[43]

The No Boundaries project published in November 2017 a list of sites that record in detail the behavior of their visitors - up to what keys on the keyboard the user presses, what mouse movements he makes and how he uses page scrolling. No Boundaries says that similar shadowing users is carried out by many popular websites, both Russian, and foreign, including yandex.ru, hp.com, comcast.net, istockphoto.com, intel.com, lenovo.com, autodesk.com, windows.com, t-mobile.com, mts.ru, kaspersky.com, redhat.com, logitech.com, adidas.com, hpe.com, symantec.com, nintendo.com, alfabank.ru, bitrix24.ru, etc.

In all of these cases, the bots that No Boundaries uses in its research managed to catch sites right in the process of recording a user session. The project is led by security researcher Steven Englehardt of Princeton University. The data is posted on the Freedom To Tinker resource.

The script that allows you to track user behavior in such details is called "session playback." Its capabilities are significantly superior to the functionality of a regular analytical script, which determines which pages the user visits and which search queries he enters. "Session Playback" is included in analytical services used by a total of 1,239 sites out of the first 10,000 Alexa ratings.

Visit of the President of Russia to the office

On September 21, 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the Moscow office of Yandex and got acquainted with the company's developments.

Read more about the visit with a large number of photos here.

SBU searches Yandex

The offices of Yandex.Ukraine, which are located in Kyiv and Odessa, were searched in May 2017 by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU)^[44].

"In our offices in Kyiv and Odessa there are now representatives of the Security Service of Ukraine. We do not yet have information about the reasons for today's actions of the SBU. Lawyers have already left for our offices. Within the framework of legal procedures, we are ready to provide the authorities with the necessary information, "- this is how Yandex characterizes the situation.

The fact of the searches was confirmed by the SBU to Espresso TV. According to the press secretary of the SBU Elena Gitlyanskaya, the basis for the actions of the special services was Article 111 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, which provides for punishment for high treason, including in the field of national cybersecurity. The article proposes to punish those responsible with imprisonment for a term of 12 to 15 years with confiscation of property.

See also: Ukraine's sanctions on Russia and the Ban on Russian IT-Business in Ukraine. We assess the scale of the disaster

Falling under Ukrainian sanctions

On May 16, 2017, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, by his decree, enacted the decision of the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) on sanctions against Russian companies and their subsidiaries in Ukraine. In total, 468 legal entities were on the sanctions list, of which 81 were related to the IT sphere. Among the companies that fell under the sanctions were also the Russian and Ukrainian legal entities of Yandex and many of its services. The list also includes the popular portals Kinopoisk and Авто.ру, which belong to the company. Read more here.

Development of a system for monitoring tired drivers

On March 17, 2017, it became known about Yandex's plans to develop and implement an IT system to control tired drivers connected to the Yandex.Taxi service.

We have really been studying various technological solutions available in Russia and abroad for several months. If signs of fatigue are found at the wheel, such a system will warn that a break needs to be taken and may limit the acceptance of orders from passengers, Yandex told the Kommersant newspaper.

Yandex.Taxi CEO Tigran Khudaverdyan called the publication an approximate investment in the project - about $20 million. See Yandex.Taxi.

2016: Start of development of self-driving cars

Main article: Yandex.Taxi Unmanned vehicle

In February 2016, it became known about Yandex's plans to develop unmanned vehicles. The company intends to become one of the pioneers of the autonomous vehicle control technology market. According to Vedomosti, an announcement has appeared on the Yandex website about the vacancy of a research developer who will have to deal with technologies for recognizing traffic lights, signs, lanes and markings, cars and other road users. Yandex also wants to learn how to compare the flow of incoming data from cameras and radars, simulate surrounding objects, monitor them and predict behavior, plan and execute maneuvers, the company said. See Yandex.Taxi Unmanned vehicle for more details.

2015

Internet search market share growth to 57.3%

Yandex's annual report cites data from the LiveInternet service, according to which Yandex's share in the Russian Internet search market increased to 57.3% in the fourth quarter of 2015 from 57.1% three months earlier. Searches rose 5% year-on-year.^[45]

"Despite the unfavorable economic environment and fierce competition, we managed to stabilize our market share, improve the quality of search and significantly expand the search index. We have also introduced a new technically complex auction model for advertising, which is already bringing tangible results, "said Arkady Volozh, head of the Yandex group of companies.

Ex-employee convicted of trying to sell source code

On December 24, 2015, it became known that a former Yandex employee was convicted of trying to sell the stolen source code of a search engine worth billions of rubles for nothing. The loss of the source code could result in lengthy litigation for the company in the courts, serious reputational costs and a fall in capitalization.

According to the indictment, in March 2015, Dmitry Korobov, while still working at Yandex at that time, copied software containing source code and search engine algorithms from the company's server. The information was uploaded to removable media for the purpose of subsequent transfer to third parties. Read more here.

2014: List of largest shareholders

Shareholders as of July 2014:

• Arkady Volozh (10.4% of economic interest and 35.6% of the vote),
• Baring Vostok Private Equity funds (6.1% and 18.4%, respectively),
• Vladimir Ivanov (4 and 11.2%),
• Oppenheimer family funds (7.7 and 2.63%).

The Golden Share of Yandex belongs to Sberbank.

2012

Tiger Global Fund gets rid of Yandex shares

On November 19, 2012, it became known that Tiger's stake in Yandex N.V. had decreased (according to the Renaissance Capital report, which refers to information officially disclosed by Tiger itself. As of June 29, 2012, this family of funds owned, according to Bloomberg, 32 million shares of Yandex (9.8% of all shares of the company), and on September 30 - only 23.5 million (7.2%). The weighted average market price of Yandex's share for the third quarter was $21.61 - thus, by selling 8.5 million securities, Tiger could gain $183.7 million on November 19, 2012 at 20.00 Moscow time, its stake cost $510 million.

Since November 2011, when the moratorium on the sale of Yandex shares expired after the IPO, Tiger sold 30.6 million shares of the company, analysts at Renaissance calculated. Tiger's stake in its total stock has since more than halved, from 16.2% to 7.2%, Bloomberg data show. Tiger invested in Yandex long before the IPO and even before the crisis began to make attempts to record profits. In 2008, he was one of the initiators of the then planned IPO (the crisis prevented him), and on the eve of the May 2011 offering, Tiger converted all Yandex shares belonging to him from class B (each paper has 10 votes, but there are restrictions on sales) into class A (each share has only one vote, but they can be freely sold). During the IPO, Tiger was one of the main sellers: it got rid of about 4% of Yandex's share capital.

According to Uralsib Capital analyst Konstantin Belov, Yandex remains undervalued. According to his calculations, the target price of its share in the future for 12 months should be $26, which is 19.8% higher than November 19, 2012. But each investor has its own planning horizons and his own idea of ​ ​ under what conditions leaving the asset becomes comfortable for him, Belov argues. Tiger is one of Yandex's oldest investors and it is logical to assume that the current price provides it with an acceptable rate of return on invested capital, he says.

From the point of view of investors, the reduction in Tiger's share is good news, as free-float is growing and Yandex shares are becoming more liquid, according to a report by Renaissance analysts (they now estimate its volume at 43%)^[46]

Yandex for the first time bypassed Channel One in terms of audience size

The Yandex portal in April 2012 was visited daily by 19.1 million people, while the audience of the television Channel One was 18.2 million people a day. Such data are provided by the Vedomosti newspaper, referring to a study by TNS. Thus, the Internet resource for the first time became the most popular media in Russia. Yandex, as well as Mail.ru, almost caught up with Pervoye and in a weekly audience (for this in April they did not have enough 0.7 million and 1.2 million people, respectively), the newspaper writes.

The number of searches in Russia from August 2010 to August 2012 almost doubled.

The difference between the audience of all TV channels and the entire Russian-speaking segment of the Internet is also reduced. According to TNS, 30.5 million Russians entered the global network daily in April, which is about 1 million less than the total number of viewers in April.

Court for the results of extradition

On February 7, 2012, it became known that the Supreme Arbitration Court (EAC) registered a complaint from EAA Asset Management-Consulting Ltd (British Virgin Islands) against a court order refusing to oblige Yandex to remove content from the search engine, RAPSI reported. The plaintiff had previously lost several lower courts in an attempt to prove that the search engine should not have indexed a number of material on the site compromat.ru.

In 2011, EAA Asset Management-Consulting filed a lawsuit against Yandex to protect its business reputation. She demanded to oblige the search engine to stop searching for information on the site www.compromat.ru. The data related to the founder of the Austrian financial and industrial group EAA Asset Management-Consulting Mikhail Dvornikov^[47].

'We

cannot comment on the complaint made to the EAC as we have not received any documents. We agree with the courts of the first and appellate instances, which once again supported Yandex's position that information is not disseminated in the search engine. Yandex is not a censor and is not responsible for the content of other sites that fall into the search index, "said Yandex spokesman Ochir Manjikov

.

Vasily Moiseev, a lawyer at MKA Nikolaev & Partners, considers the decision of the Virgin company to go to court illogical: "The claims would be understandable if Yandex and EAA Asset Management-Consulting Ltd were in a contractual relationship. In the meantime, the plaintiff should file a lawsuit against the site on which the false information is published. If we assume that YOU will nevertheless take the side of the plaintiff, then many will want to put forward such accusations to search engines. So the latter will simply go bankrupt, paying claims. True, I do not believe in such an outcome - it is unlikely.

" "It is

illogical and unreasonable to blame Yandex in this case: the search engine is not competent to determine the accuracy and objectivity of the information, the court should do this," comments German Klimenko, founder of LiveInternet, to RBC daily. - When Yandex filters information, for example, about pornography, the search engine is guided by the law. So, in this case, it would be wiser for the company to go to court with a demand to recognize the information on the site as compromat.ru false. Only then will it become logical to ask Yandex to ban the indexation of this material. "

Development of the Yandex.Disk service

On February 27, 2012, it became known that Yandex is developing a service with the working name Yandex.Disk.

2011

Installing search in smartphones on Windows in Russia

In November 2011, it became known that Yandex search will become the main one for Russian users smartphones on the platform (Microsoft Windows Phone 7 WP7). Thus, the search engine is trying to stop the fall in the share of^[47] search market#^[47]

Yandex search will be installed as the main one in smartphones HTC Mozart, Titan and Radar, Samsung Omnia W and two Nokia Lumia devices, said Yandex spokesman Ochir Manjikov. This was confirmed by representatives of Samsung, HTC and Nokia.

The parties did not disclose the terms of cooperation with manufacturers. Usually, the manufacturer and the search engine divide the revenues from advertising shown on smartphones in a proportion of 50% by 50%, says Eldar Murtazin, leading analyst at Mobile Research Group.

Microsoft has its own search engine - Bing. Microsoft offers Russian users the most popular services, explains a Microsoft representative. Although the final decision on the choice of a search engine, according to him, is made by smartphone manufacturers. Yandex is more popular in Russia than Bing, adds Nokia representative Victoria Eremina.

Bing is not very popular in Russia - its share, according to Liveinternet, amounted to only 0.8% in October 2011. Yandex, on the contrary, is the leader in the Runet search market. But recently, its share has been declining, while the popularity of its main competitor - Google - is growing. From December 2010 to October 2011, Yandex's share fell by 3 pp to 61.1%, while Google's share increased by 4 pp to 25.5%. Unlike Yandex, Google is developing its own operating system for Android mobile devices and the Chrome browser, where the main search is Google. According to Svyaznoy, the share of Android in Russia in the first nine months of 2011 increased from 9 to 27%. And the share of Chrome in the third quarter of 2011 reached 17% - this is almost twice as much as a year earlier (Liveinternet data).

To increase its share, Yandex is negotiating with phone and browser manufacturers to establish its search as the main one for users from Russia. Recently, an agreement was signed with Samsung to install Yandex search on phones with Bada OS.

Mobile versions of Microsoft OS are losing popularity: according to Svyaznoy, for nine months of 2011 the share of smartphones supporting them amounted to 3% (a year earlier - 13%). Microsoft is trying to fix the situation. Last fall, it released a new OS for Microsoft Windows Phone 7 (WP7) smartphones, and in February 2011 agreed with Nokia to release WP7-based phones.

If users like the innovations of the WP7, in a year the share of devices based on this OS will reach 10-20%, says Alexander Malis, President of Euroset. According to M.video, the demand for the first devices with WP7 is "restrained."

Employee options

On November 1, 2011, it became known that Yandex reported to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on the current state of its option program. It turned out that during the public offering of Yandex shares in May 2011, option holders bought out more than $50 million of the company's securities^[47].

Representatives of the company explained that some of the options were exercised during the IPO, but who bought the shares does not say. As follows from the documents on the SEC website, most of the options were indeed exercised at the offering price, and those to whom these options were issued could buy at $25 - these are "certain" old Yandex shareholders and company employees, including Arkady Volozh, who was given an option for 500 thousand shares.

But not everyone acquired Yandex so expensive. For options issued before 2011, the purchase price of the share was $2-4. And the cheapest Yandex option went in January 2009 to employees of Media Selling LLC - for 378 thousand shares at a price of 1 cent for each. The value of Media Selling options that have not been realized today (314 thousand shares) is $8.6 million. Yandex financial director Alexander Shulgin in 2010, for example, bought Yandex at $4.16, and former head of the presidential administration Alexander Voloshin, who is on the board of directors, bought Yandex at $3.43.

After the IPO, almost every Yandex employee received 10 conditional shares of the company for each year of work in the company. These, as they are also called, phantom shares will be cashed in the form of a premium on December 30, 2011 - based on the corresponding quotes on the NASDAQ. But how many employees own real options now and how many of them no longer work at Yandex, the company does not disclose, indicating that this is about 10% of the staff. At the end of the third quarter, 3163 people worked in the company.

According to the May prospectus, Yandex employees who have not agreed to place their shares directly on the IPO cannot sell securities earlier than 180 days after the initial placement. For the general director Arkady Volozh and the technical director Ilya Segalovich, the term is higher - one year. The ban also applies to underwriting banks.

The embargo is lifted on November 21. However, the company warned investors that due to active sales after the 180-day embargo, Yandex shares "may decline at any time." On the other hand, a total sale is also not expected, since the standard option rules adopted by Yandex provide for their gradual implementation: 25% - after 365 days after issuance, the remaining - in equal shares on the last day of each quarter of the next three years.

One can hardly expect a large decline in the exchange rate of Yandex, says Finam analyst Leonid Delitsyn. At the current stock exchange rate, only those who received shares long ago and inexpensively can significantly win; for most owners there is a good reserve. The current target price of Yandex at the end of 2012 from Finam analysts is $26.41. "Therefore, the current $27.52 is a fair assessment of the company, although a number of other investment companies have estimates up to $40 per share and higher," says Delitsyn. - Probably, we will increase our estimates. Yandex's indicators are ahead of previously announced forecasts for the development of Russian contextual advertising. "

Institutional investors, according to the expert, will also wait for quotes to approach $40. The biggest risk to Internet capitalization in the short term is the IPO of discount service Groupon, scheduled for the end of November. "If the placement is unsuccessful, investors may have a feeling that the bubble is deflating," Delitsyn concluded.

Google removes Yandex search from Chrome browser

October 2011 When a Russian company was preparing to open an office in Turkey in 2011, Google removed Yandex search from its proprietary Chrome browser.

Reaching 5th place in the world in terms of the number of requests processed

The Yandex search engine is in 5th place in the world among search engines in terms of the number of processed search queries (comScore, September 2011^[48]

In September 2010, Yandex ranked only sixth in a similar rating, behind the world's largest social network Facebook. Now the Russian search engine has moved to the fifth line, and Facebook is on the seventh.

The first places in the ranking are still occupied by Google, Baidu, Yahoo and Microsoft.

Structure of Yandex owners after IPO

During the placement on the NASDAQ exchange, 52.2 million shares were sold (which is 16% of the authorized capital, or 3% of the voting shares). The scheme depicts the structure of 75% of Yandex's voting shares after the IPO. All shareholders with a stake of more than 3% as of May 25, 2011 are represented. The remaining shares are owned by smaller shareholders.

$1.3 billion Nasdaq stock offering

May 23, 2011 Yandex successfully placed shares on. Nasdaq The company raised its previously announced share price from $22 to $25 and raised $1.3 billion. The placement of the Russian company became the largest Internet after IPO. Google Yandex was valued at more than $8 billion, and its founder Arkady Volozh earned $101 million.

On the New York Stock Exchange Nasdaq, an initial placement of shares of Yandex, registered in the Holland parent structure of the Russian Yandex, took place. As reported Reuters with reference to its own sources, the offering price was $25 per share. This is more than the originally announced price corridor of $20-22. The company said only that trading in shares will begin in the evening Moscow time.

The increase in price was the result of increased demand for the company's securities: as Interfax reported on Friday, the Yandex share application book was re-signed more than 5 times. During the placement, 52.2 million shares were sold, thus, the volume of placement amounted to $1.304. According to the BBC, this is the largest IPO of an Internet company after Google, which raised $1.67 billion in 2004.

The entire Yandex was valued at $8.031 billion. This estimate is in line with 23 earnings forecasts for 2012, Bloomberg notes, while Google is trading on a similar multiple (to 2012 earnings) of 13. The company itself sold 15.4 million shares, which allowed it to raise $385 million. The remaining 36.7 million outstanding shares belong to Yandex shareholders, who were able to earn $919 million.

The Street analyst Debra Boarchardt notes that the placement of Russian companies on American exchanges is uncommon, and this alarms investors. But, the analyst adds, the opportunity to buy shares of an Internet search engine in the region of $20 per share looks attractive: Google shares are trading at $518, Chinese Baidu - at $129.

Yandex management took an active part in the sale of shares during the IPO. Yandex founder and CEO Arkady Volozh earned $101 million, technical director Ilya Segalovich - $20.45 million, commercial director Alexei Tretyakov - $9.165 million, head of the development department Alexei Mazurov - $3.636 million, project director Dmitry Ivanov - $4.845 million, director of system administration Mikhail Fadeev - $454 thousand. As a result of the IPO, Volozh has 19.77% of Yandex's voting shares (he owns part of his stake through BC&B Holdings, an offshore joint with Baring Vostok), and Segalovich has 4.15%.

Chairman of the Board of Directors of Systematics Leonid Boguslavsky sold Yandex shares for $67.7 million. Now Boguslavsky has 6% of the company's voting shares through Roth Advisors offshore. Among the members of the board of directors of Yandex, the founder of the United Financial Group and partner of the Almaz Capital fund Charles Rayn earned $70.8 million, Ben Cole (through Cole Management) - $59.5 million, President of Firehouse Capital John Boyton, through the John W. Boynton Trust offshore) - $5.8 million

Ben Kol has been investing in Russia since the early 90s, including investing in CompTek (CompTek), which founded Yandex. In 2000, Yandex attracted the first investors, in particular, the Ru-net Holdings fund owned by Baring Vostok. The fund was then headed by Leonid Boguslavsky, and among its investors was Charles Rhyne.

In addition to Volozh, the largest sellers of Yandex shares included the Baring Vostok and Tiger Global funds, with the latter's share falling from 20.27% to 2.67% of voting shares. Tiger made $187 million in IPOs Tiger owns a stake in Yandex through offshore Tiger Global Cooperatief, whose shares are distributed among 7 investment funds. 6 of these funds are owned by Charles Coleman.

Baring Vostok earned $156 million in its IPO, while the group remains Yandex's largest shareholder with a 26% stake in voting shares. Baring Vostok's share is distributed between offshores BC&B Holding and Ru-net, which through nominal holders are owned by Barying Vostok Private Equity funds. Each of the funds has its own general partner, Baring Vostok Manager Holding owns shares of these partners. Elena Ivashcheeva, a member of the board of directors of Yandex, and other persons own a stake in this structure through nominal holders. Funds are managed by Baring Vostok Fung Managers, decisions are made by an investment committee of fund representatives (committee members are listed in the table) based on the proposals of the investment partner of the funds - BVCPL.

First facts in the media about the planned IPO

On April 15, 2011, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), citing a source familiar with the company's plans, reported that Yandex's preliminary estimate for the upcoming IPO was $6-9 billion, and the placement could take place in late May - early June 2011. This was confirmed to Vedomosti by a manager close to the participants in the placement, warning that the estimate is "very preliminary." According to the interlocutors of WSJ and Vedomosti, Yandex will place on NASDAQ 10-20% of the shares^[49].

Earlier, Vedomosti sources said that the company and its co-owners plan to raise $1 billion at the IPO. It has not yet been decided whether only new securities or shares of co-owners will be put on the exchange, too, says a manager close to the participants in the placement. The organizers of the IPO are Deutsche Bank (Deutschebank), Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.

The organizing banks estimated Yandex at 14.6 to 22 revenue indicators for 2010 (12.5 billion rubles, or $410 million). Baidu's capitalization-revenue ratio over the past 12 months was 42.2, Google's - 5.5, VK (formerly Mail.ru Group) - 20.9.

In November 2010, the IPO was held by Yandex's closest competitor in Runet - VK (formerly Mail.ru Group). The demand for its shares was several times higher than the supply. Investors acquired an 18.4% stake for about $1 billion, of which the company got $92 million, and the rest to shareholders. The market estimated the entire Mail.ru Group at $5.71 billion.

Mail.ru Group and Yandex have very different businesses, says Anastacia Obukhova, an analyst at VTB Capital: the first earns mainly from media advertising and paid services, the second - from contextual advertising (88% of Yandex's revenue in 2010). In addition, a significant part of Mail.ru Group's assets are foreign, while Yandex is "a completely Russian story," Obukhova notes. But the placement of Mail.ru Group attracted the attention of Western investors to Runet as a whole, said Dmitry Grishin, CEO and co-owner of Mail.ru Group.

An estimate of $6-9 billion is fair, Yandex earns the most on the Internet in Russia and has the largest audience, says Finam analyst Leonid Delitsyn; in addition, unlike many other Internet companies, Yandex has already paid dividends (for the first time - in 2003 - Vedomosti). All this will allow Yandex's stock exchange rate to stay when many Internet companies, highly overvalued in the wake of investments in Facebook, begin to fall in price, Delitsyn said.

Obukhova is inclined to compare the cost of Yandex not so much with the Mail.ru Group as with the market multipliers of the Chinese search engine Baidu, like Yandex, which bypassed Western search engines in the domestic market. But Baidu's multipliers should be higher, Delitsyn is convinced: the Chinese market is the largest in the world and investors have much higher hopes for it than for the Russian one.

The structure of the company's shareholders before the IPO:

• Volozh Arkady Yuryevich - it was 20.27%, it became - 19.77%;
• Segalovich Ilya Valentinovich - it was 4.43%, it became - 4.15%.

Golden share - Sberbank

Prior to the IPO, UFG Group and Almaz Capital Russia Fund held a combined 4.06% of voting shares, including 8.14% of Class "A" shares. UFG Group's controlling shareholder is Yandex board member Charles Ryan, who is also a senior partner at Almaz Capital.

The largest shareholder of Yandex was the funds of the Baring Vostok Private Equity group. The owners of the foundation were Rahul Bhasin, Chris Brotchie, Michael Calvey, John Dare, Terry English, Jian Salata, Rory Landman and Antonio Bironrichiano (Bonantiano). Elena Ivashcheeva, his partner, member of the board of directors of Yandex, also owns a stake in the fund.

Notice of IPO Plans

On April 28, 2011, it became known that the Dutch company Yandex - the sole shareholder of the Russian Yandex - sent a notice to the American Securities Commission of its intention to conduct an IPO. The placement of shares will take place on the NASDAQ exchange. The volume and price of the offering have not yet been determined, a source close to the company says that this will happen in May 2011. Voting shares of the company will be sent to the exchange.

Part of the placement will be shares of existing shareholders, part - newly issued shares. Earlier, sources of news agencies said that the entire company was valued at $6-9 billion, and it is planned to raise about $1 billion from the IPO.

Morgan Stanley was chosen as the main coordinator of the IPO. He, together with Deutsche Bank (Deutschebank) and Goldman Sachs, will be the organizers of the placement. Co-executors will be Piper Jaffray & Co. and Pacific Crest Securities LLC.

Ahead of the IPO, Yandex's share capital will consist of 80 million Class "A" shares and 216 Class "B" shares. Only shares of class "A" will be displayed on the exchange, each of which has one vote. One class "B" share has 10 votes, but, according to the shareholder agreement, this kind of securities can only be sold to Yandex itself.

The shareholder also has the right to exchange a Class "B" share for one Class "A" share and one Class "C" share. The latter has 9 votes, but is subject to gratuitous transfer to Yandex with subsequent repayment.

Yandex CEO Arkady Volozh owns 19.77% of Yandex's voting shares (including 4.5% of the shares that Volozh's offshore Belka Holdinbgs owns through a joint BC&B Holdings structure with Baring Vostok). Technical director Ilya Segalovich - 4.14%. A member of the board of directors of Yandex, the former head of the administrations of Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, Alexander Voloshin, within three months after the IPO, can exercise an offer for the purchase of 21.9 thousand shares of class "A," and then - for another 28.1 thousand shares.

The largest shareholder of Yandex is the funds of the Baring Vostok Private Equity group: they own 23.89% of voting shares, including 18.74% of class "A" shares. The owners of the foundation are Rahul Bhasin, Chris Brotchie, Michael Calvey, John Dare, Terry English, Jian Salata, Rory Landman and Antonio Bironriciano Bononriciano. Elena Ivashcheeva, his partner, member of the board of directors of Yandex, also owns a stake in the fund.

But the Tiger Global Holdings fund decided to take advantage of the right to convert class "B" shares into class "A, as a result, the share of voting shares belonging to it will decrease from 20.24% to 2.76%, but the fund will become the largest holder of class" A "shares with a share of 70.9%. The main owner of the fund is Charles P. Coleman. Shares in Tiger Gobal are also owned by Scott Shleifer, Feroz Dewan and Lee Fixel.

The funds of UFG Group and Almaz Capital Russia Fund own a total of 4.06% of voting shares, including 8.14% of class "A" shares. UFG Group's controlling shareholder is Yandex board member Charles Ryan, who is also a senior partner at Almaz Capital. Roth Advisors (6.42%) and International Financial Corporation (6.12%) also own large voting shares in Yandex.

Yandex considers its main competitor, Google whose position in the Internet market, as expected in the company, will be strengthened, among other things, through a mobile platform. Android The largest local competitor in Yandex is called, Mail.ru in addition, the company expects competition from social networks. " Schoolmates"," etc Vkontakte Facebook.

Development risks

The company warned investors that if the Russian government implements plans to create a "national search engine," it will also lead to a decrease in Yandex's share.

Among the risk factors named by Yandex, it is worth noting search spam, false clicks on advertising banners and the use of Yandex.Money for fraudulent transactions, online casinos, sales of child pornography and other illegal transactions. The company also warned investors that since its office is located in the center of Moscow, this could limit the company's growth opportunities due to the high cost of renting.

Launch of the new Reykjavik search platform

On August 16, 2011, Yandex launched a new search platform called Reykjavik. It takes into account the user's language preferences: "Now people who search for English-speaking resources more often will see more links to them in search results, and vice versa." Yandex calls this step the first in the direction of personalizing search.

"According to Yandex statistics, most users prefer responses in their native language. But there are also those who are looking for English-language answers, "says Denis Raskovalov, head of the search quality development department. "We've experimented a lot trying to find the best way to meet the needs of both. As a result, we decided to teach search to take into account users' language preferences and adapt to them. "

Reykjavik pays attention only to requests in English. It filters out the Latin transliteration of Russian-language requests, site addresses, keyboard layout errors, etc.

At the same time, the English-language question itself does not always mean finding the same answer, the company clarifies. For example, at the request of [beatles] or [rothko], a person can also search for Russian sites. Reykjavik takes into account whether the user often opens a web page in English from search results.

"Information about whether the user needs English-language resources is used when ranking. And if necessary, a person sees more links to them among the first search results, "say Yandex.

As of mid-August 2011, about 8% of Yandex users prefer answers in English, according to the Internet company.

6th place in the top 10 world search engines

According to comScore as of June 2011, Yandex ranks 6th in the Top 10 world search engines. In April 2011, comScore reported that 2.5 billion search queries were made in Russia with the help of Yandex per month, while in the rest of the world during the same period there were 300 million calls to the search engine (however, a significant part of them probably came from residents of the CIS countries).

Decrease in the share of searches due to the growing popularity of the Chrome browser

The Chrome browser is gaining popularity - according to Liveinternet, as of September 2011, 16% of Russian Internet users use it. Therefore, in September 2011, the share of Yandex search queries in Russia decreased to 61% (in August - 63%). After reporting this at a meeting between Volozh and investors, the company's securities exchange rate on NASDAQ fell by 13% to $22.9. On Friday, September 30, quotes fell to $20.5 per share.

Banner Price Increase

On December 5, 2011, it became known that Yandex announced an average of 28% increase in prices for media advertising in 2012, while the company is not going to change its prices Mail.ru at all.

Lev Glazer, director of media product development at Yandex, told Vedomosti that the company changes the advertising price list once a year, and in 2010 Yandex's media advertising went up by 24%^[46]. In 2012, the average price of banners will increase by 28%, and advertising on the main page of the search engine when concluding an annual contract will rise in price by 67%.

The rise in advertising prices in Yandex is explained by the fact that the demand for placement on the pages of the site in 2011 exceeded the capabilities of the search engine. As the company adds, for 2012 Yandex already has agreements with some customers at new prices.

Another Russian Internet company is not going to raise Mail.ru prices in 2012. The company explains this approach by the fact that due to the unclear situation in the economy, advertisers lay zero media inflation in the budget for next year. In addition, in 2011, compared to 2010, Mail.ru has already increased prices by 50%.

As Vedomosti clarifies with reference to Alexei Vasilenko, director of procurement in non-television media at Vivaki Russia, there is a decline in the media advertising market at the end of 2011, so most of the Internet sites will not raise prices for banners. At the same time, Yandex, according to Vasilenko, is focused on constant growth in the contextual advertising market, in which it is the leader, and therefore raises prices in other areas.

Yandex Labs Reorganization

On December 13, 2011, Yandex announced a reorganization at its Yandex Labs division located in Silicon Valley, USA.

"We are reorganizing our office at Yandex Labs in Palo Alto to improve efficiency. Yandex Labs will now deal exclusively with the quality of English-language search. All functions not related to English-language search will be distributed among other Yandex development offices, Ochir Manjikov told CNews, a spokesman^[46].

According to the publication Roem.ru, as part of the reorganization of the office in Palo Alto, the company fired nine employees of Yandex Labs, and the dismissal was urgent. Among those who lost their jobs were famous scientists and engineers.

2010

Launch Yandex.com - search by foreign sites

In May 2010, the company launched a search only on foreign sites - Yandex.com.

Launch of a search engine in Belarus

In 2010, Yandex opened a portal for Belarus (yandex.by), launched a search on foreign sites (yandex.com), a regional search for Ukraine and a number of specialized services - Yandex.Real Estate, Yandex.Work, Yandex.Music, Yandex.Services.

Launch of search technology "Spectrum"

In 2010, the Spectrum search technology was introduced. It allows you to take into account the needs of users who were not explicitly formulated in the request.

Revenue growth by 43%, share in search up to 64%

In 2010, Yandex's revenue amounted to 12.5 billion rubles. or $410 million (growth for the year - 43%), of which 88% was received from contextual advertising. In relation to 2009, sales of contextual advertising increased by 45%. The number of Yandex advertisers increased by more than 40% in 2010, amounting to more than 180 thousand in 2010.

For comparison, according to AKAR, in the first nine months of 2010, the total growth of the advertising market in Russia amounted to 14%, the online advertising market grew by 37%.

Operating profit of Yandex increased by 58% to 4.823 billion rubles, net profit - 3.817 billion rubles (growth also amounted to 58%).

As of the end of March, there were 700 million rubles in the accounts of users of the Yaneks.Money payment system.

"The main result of the year for us was an increase in the share of Yandex search, which we achieved thanks to constant work on the quality of the product," says Arkady Volozh, CEO of the company. "The significant growth of the company's revenues in 2010 reflects two important trends - the revival of small and medium-sized businesses after the crisis and the flow of advertising budgets from other channels to the Internet."

According to LiveInternet, in 2010 the share of Yandex search increased in Russia by 5.2 percentage points (to 64.1% in December 2010). Google's share decreased by 1.9 pp to 21.5%, Mail.ru - by 2.4 pp to 7.6%, Rambler - by 1.6 pp to 1.8%.

In Ukraine, Yandex grew by 6.2 percentage points (up to 27%), in Kazakhstan - by 4.6 percentage points (up to 24.4%). According to comScore, from November 2009 to November 2010, Yandex's monthly audience grew by 64%, in November 2010 it amounted to more than 54 million users.

2009

1.29 billion requests per month

Yandex's daily audience is nine million people. The audience of Yandex in February 2009 amounted to 18.4 million (TNS data). In July 2009, Yandex served 1.29 billion search queries, while a year ago this figure was 663 million (comScore).

Minority shareholders sell shares to large funds

Small shareholders of Yandex sold 9% of the search engine to large ones - Baring Vostok and Tiger Management funds, as well as UFG Asset Management. Buyers estimated Yandex at $1.1 billion, which is at least three times cheaper than before the crisis.

9% акций купили UFG Asset Management, Baring Vostok Capital Partners (BVCP) и Tiger Global Management. Sold - managers and founders of Yandex, says investment banker. An employee of Yandex assures that the shares were sold mainly by private investors, not managers.

Among the sellers is the president of IBS Group Anatoly Karachinsky, who owned 1% of Yandex. The shares were sold by the Oradell Capital fund established by IBS, Karachinsky said. Now Oradell has completely left Yandex.

For the transaction, Yandex was valued at $1.1 billion, says Karachinsky. This assessment is also confirmed by a Yandex employee. That is, Yandex has fallen in price by at least three times over the year.

A Yandex employee says that before the deal, BVCP, Runet Holdings and Tiger owned about 50%, and now they own about 60% with UFG. UFG was going to buy about 5% of Yandex, sources close to it said.

Yandex's assessment is adequate, corresponds to the multipliers of its global counterparts - Google and Altaba (formerly Yahoo), says Alexander Galitsky, partner of the Almaz Capital fund.

Golden share "Sberbank"

In mid-April 2009, two sources in Russian state-owned banks told Vedomosti that Sberbank, controlled by the state, could receive a "golden share" of the largest Yandex search engine in Runet. The project of transferring Yandex's golden share to the state bank was discussed with the deputy head of the presidential administration Vladislav Surkov, a source close to the presidential administration confirmed. In Surkov's reception, the Vedomosti correspondent was addressed to his adviser Konstantin Kostin, who declined to comment.

Yandex and Sberbank reported the fact of the transaction only on September 23, 2009. Yandex's parent company, Dutch Yandex N. V., has released a priority share. Yandex held a competition between several state-owned companies, and Sberbank won it as "state, public and without direct interests on the Internet and media." He received the action at a symbolic price - 1 euro.

The share gives only one right: to veto the sale of more than 25% of Yandex shares. The mechanism is as follows: if one of the shareholders collects a significant stake and decides to sell it, this issue will be submitted to the board of directors of Yandex, he will inform Sberbank and the bank's board will decide whether to allow the deal or block it, says Yandex spokesman Mikhail Ushakov. Sberbank will not have a seat on the board of directors, it will not participate in the management of the company. Sberbank will not be able to sell the priority share without the consent of the Yandex board of directors.

A similar mechanism was recently introduced at Rosgosstrakh. President Medvedev excluded him from the list of strategic enterprises, and in return the state received a "golden action" giving veto power on strategic issues.

Transferring the share to the state bank is an initiative of Yandex, says Ushakov. Such a scheme, he said, will preserve the management principles laid down by the founders: when no group of shareholders can make decisions on the development of the company alone. A source close to Yandex shareholders adds: this, on the one hand, will protect Yandex from an unfriendly takeover, on the other, it will ensure that it does not have a "co-investor" incomprehensible to the state.

"Such

a decision was made by the shareholders of Yandex N. V. to<...> ensure transparency when changing the composition of shareholders in preparation<...> for the initial offering of shares," the press release said.

Yandex does not disclose plans for placement. The company was set to float on the NASDAQ last fall, but it was hampered by the crisis.

Matrixnet Technology

In 2009, Yandex introduced the new Matrixnet machine learning method. Thanks to this method, it became possible to take into account many times more factors and their combinations when searching. This made it possible to make the search more accurate, as well as improve the quality of responses to individual classes of queries. Thanks to this, Yandex managed to make a qualitative leap in the search.

2008

IPO cancellation as financial crisis begins

In the fall of 2008, Yandex was going to hold an IPO on NASDAQ, but canceled it due to the crisis. Investment banks that were supposed to participate in the placement valued the company at $5 billion, and analysts at $3 billion. Anna Kurbatova, an analyst at Gazprombank, considered it possible to evaluate Yandex based on the multipliers on which shares of similar foreign companies are traded. The capitalization of the American Altaba (formerly Yahoo) was 39.6 of its net profit, and Google - 24.4. Based on these values, Yandex could cost $2.7-4.4 billion. But net profit under RAS may be unproven, Kurbatova warns. The company does not disclose net income under US GAAP.

Alisher Usmanov could not acquire 10% of the shares

Alisher Usmanov agreed to buy 10% of Yandex in September 2008, but the deal never took place then.

Opening of the School of Data Analysis

In 2008, Yandex opened the School of Data Analysis - free two-year courses that train specialists in the field of data processing and analysis and extracting information from the Internet. On the basis of the School of Data Analysis at MIPT, the Department of Data Analysis was organized. In addition, Yandex participates in the organization of scientific olympiads for students and schoolchildren. Thus, Yandex creates and maintains in Russia a scientific environment favorable for the emergence of new technologies.

The first hit in the top ten largest search engines on the planet

At the beginning of 2008, Yandex was first included in the top ten largest search engines on the planet - its market share in terms of the number of search queries in the world was 0.9%, ComScore analysts calculated.

2006: First Remote Development Office in St. Petersburg

In 2006, Yandex opened its first remote development office - in St. Petersburg.

2005: Office in Ukraine

In 2005, Yandex went beyond Russia, opening a representative office in Ukraine. The task of the Ukrainian office was and is to create services specifically for the Ukrainian audience and sell advertising in the country.

2002-2003: Self-sufficiency and first dividend

Yandex reached self-sufficiency in November 2002 - six months earlier than planned. Already in August 2002, the company's revenues exceeded expenses, Yandex finished all the last months of 2002 with a plus. Since then, the company has always been profitable.

In the summer of 2003, the company's Board of Directors decided to pay dividends, the first on the Russian Internet.

2001: Yandex.Direct

In 2001, Yandex opened Yandex.Direct. This is a system for automatic placement of contextual advertising. With the help of the Directive, anyone can directly, without intermediaries, place their ads on Yandex. During the first year of the Directive's existence, 2500 advertisers posted ads on Yandex.

2000: Formation of Yandex

Yandex was established in 2000. Its founders were the shareholders of CompTek - the company within the walls of which the Yandex search engine was created. Ru-Net Holdings invested $5.28 million in Yandex for 35.72% of the company. The shareholders also included Yandex managers and leading search engine developers. Arkady Volozh became the CEO of the company.

In 2000, they came up with the slogan "There is everything." In the same year, Yandex launched the first advertisement for the Internet site on Russian television.

The first yandex computers were called the letters of the old Russian alphabet - "az," "beech," "lead," etc. In working moments, it sounded like this: "the earth fell," "the place ended on good." Then the Russian alphabet ended, during the week there was a discussion about which alphabet would be next. We chose Armenian.

The first two Yandex servers were under the feet of the first sysadmin. The third server did not fit under the legs, I had to move to hosting in MTU. In 2000, Yandex built its first server room, and since then all servers have been in their own data centers.

1998: First contextual banner

In 1998, contextual advertising appeared on the Yandex.ru for the first time - advertising that meets the user's request. With this method of display, only its target audience sees the ad. Contextual advertising has become one of the additional answers to user questions, and subsequently - the main business model of Yandex.

1997: Launch of the Yandex.ru

In the spring of 1997, Jandex.CD appeared - searching for documents on CD ROM, and then Jandex.Lib - a fully functional Jandex library for embedding in various applications and databases.

Six months later, it became obvious that nothing separates CompTek from creating its own global search engine. The volume of the Runet was then only a few gigabytes. In the fall of 1997, Yandex.Ru was opened.

Since its founding, Yandex has been cooperating with Artemy Lebedev Studio. The studio specialists develop website designs, printing and business graphics for the company. The largest number of works was performed by Roma Voronezh, but almost all of the studio's leading designers took part in the work on Yandex.

When developing the first design of Yandex's main page, it was not clear how to decorate it, except for the search bar. Came up with Tales and Numbers. The Yandex logo was drawn at an angle, and the company's employees received letters: "Could not put a piece of paper in the scanner exactly?"

The official birthday of the Yandex.Ru search engine is September 23, 1997. On this day, the system was announced at Softool in Moscow.

The main distinguishing features of Yandex.Ru at that time were checking the uniqueness of documents (excluding copies in different encodings), as well as the key properties of the Yandex search engine, namely:

• taking into account the morphology of the Russian language (including the search for the exact word form),
• distance-based search (including within a paragraph, exact phrase), and
• a carefully developed algorithm for assessing the relevance (correspondence of a response to a request), taking into account not only the number of query words found in the text, but also the "contrast" of the word (its relative frequency for this document), the distance between words, and the position of the word in the document.

The need to support Yandex.Ru in conditions of large volumes and large loads (several requests per second) leads to the optimization of algorithms, which are then used in other Yandex products.

1993: Joining CompTek

In 1993, Arcadia became a division of CompTek (CompTek). In 1993-1994, software technologies were significantly improved thanks to cooperation with the laboratory of Yuri Apresyan (Institute for Information Transmission Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences). In particular, the dictionary, which provides a search taking into account the morphology of the Russian language, occupied only 300 KB, that is, it was completely loaded into RAM and worked very quickly. From now on, the user could specify any form of words in the query.

Based on the new technology, in 1994 the "Biblical Computer Directory" was created (an information and search engine that provides work with the Synodal Translation of the Old and New Testaments). In 1995, the project "Academic Edition of Classics on CD ROM" was launched, developed jointly with the NTC "Information Register" and IMLI named after M. Gorky RAS with the support of Roskominform. For this project, a universal Argonaut technology was created, which included both markup and text display tools and navigation tools, as well as various searches - both text and attribute. On the basis of this technology, 3 editions were published - the reference book of standards "Inform - Standard," the electronic scientific publication "A. S. Griboedov" and "Pushkin. Electronic Fund of Russian Classical Literature. " A dictionary of the Griboyedov language was also created.

The word "Yandex" was invented by Ilya Segalovich, Yandex's current technology director, and the company's general director, Arkady Volozh, in 1993. Ilya wrote out various derivatives of words describing the essence of the technology. As a result, a variant of "yandex" appeared.

"Yandex" means "Language index," or, if in English, "Yandex" means "Yet Another indexer." Over the years of the public existence of Jandex, other interpretations have arisen. For example, if you translate the first letter ("I" - "I") from English in the word "Index," you get "Yandex."

1996: First products of the Yandex series

In early 1996, an algorithm for constructing hypotheses was developed. From now on, the morphological analysis has ceased to be tied to the dictionary - if there is no word in the dictionary, then there are the most similar dictionary words and a inflection model is built on them.

In the summer of 1996, CompTek management and search engine developers came to the conclusion that the development of the technology itself is more important and more interesting than the creation of search-based application products. Market research has shown the timeliness and great prospects of search technologies.

At Netcom '96, on October 18, 1996, CompTek announced the first products of the Jandex series (Jandex.Site, Jandex.Dict). Yandex.Site - search your site. Yandex.Dict, a morphological extension of the request, is still used, for example, to transmit a request to AltaVista, although today it is no longer so relevant - AltaVista indexes the Russian Internet much worse than Russian search engines.

1990: Arcadia - the beginning of search software development

The history of Yandex began in 1990 with the development of search software at Arkady. For two years of work, two information and search systems were created - the International Classification of Inventions, the 4th and 5th editions, the Classifier of Goods and Services and the search by the Bible, which took into account the morphology of the Russian language. Both systems operated under DOS and allowed searching by selecting words from a given dictionary, using standard logical operators.

Notes