Yandex
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| Basic information | |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1997 |
| Legal Structure | Private |
| Industry | Computing, Technology |
| Also known as | |
| Official website | https://yandex.com/ |
Yandex is a Russian technology conglomerate that provides internet-related services such as Yandex Search, Yandex Taxi and Yandex Maps. It was founded in 1997 by Arkady Volozh and Ilya Segalovich as a search engine and over the years developed to become the number one used search engine in the Russian Federation[1] and started having subsidiary companies in many different industries including: cloud computing, web mapping, online food ordering, streaming media, online shopping, a ride-sharing company, music, and not so long ago started making its own electronic devices
Consumer impact summary
User freedom: The user can freely create an account and delete it, but when the user tries to delete an account, it tries to keep them from deleting it by asking questions like why they wish to delete their profile.
User privacy: As of 19 May 2022, the Yandex privacy policy states that they collect:[2]
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Business model: The business model of Yandex is maintaining its customer relationships through continuous innovation, customer support services, and personalized user experiences. Yandex is also investing in its own AI.
Market control: Yandex is the leading search engine in the Russian Federation, and is actively pursuing even more subsidiary companies to control more of the Russian market.[citation needed]
Incidents
| Controversy | Year | Background Info | Aftermath | Related Article | Related Video(s) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yandex being bundled with sketchy software, and paying bootleg Windows copy makers to include their browser as the default application upon install. | unknown - present | No consequences | PUP.Optional.Yandex | Как я обхитрил Яндекс и всех сборщиков Windows | |
| Yandex makes all searches about Alexei Navalny return only negative results. | 27 April 2020 - 28 April 2020 | Navalny was the main opposer of the Russian Government. The company tried to paint him in a bad light through the search results. | Yandex had to back down and say it was a "timed experiment". | «Яндекс» всеми своими сервисами рисует образ Навального | |
| Yandex was accused of advertising potentially unsafe results, including fake versions of well-known programs and websites. | 3 September 2024 | Yandex has promoted fake results for Skype, Anydesk, and other software, that was bundled with malware. | Yandex was taken to court, and was forced to pay ₽10,000 (~$125) | «Яндекс» наказали за рекламу контрафакта | |
| Yandex collects data about users' locations, travel speeds, and names of the Wi-Fi networks they connect to. Also, Yandex profiles users based on their search queries using Yandex "Alice". | January 2023 | In January 2023, Yandex had a massive source code leak, containing around 45 gigabytes of data. | In a press release about the data breach, Yandex said that user data was not affected, and apologized for its opaque recommendation system and "racial slurs" in some parts of its code. | Leaked Yandex Code Breaks Open the Creepy Black Box of Online Advertising | |
| Yandex was spying on its Android users using Yandex Metrica | June 2025 | Since 2017, Yandex Metrica had been sending unique identifiers of its users from web browsers into Yandex apps, which let them to link the websites the user visited to a specific user account in the Yandex ecosystem. | After the incident became known, Google began an investigation which led to Yandex to stopping the practice.[citation needed] | Meta and Yandex are de-anonymizing Android users’ web browsing identifiers | |
| Covert web-to-app tracking | Covert web-to-app tracking by Meta and Yandex |
Products
- Yandex Search
- Yandex Taxi
- Yandex Maps
- Yandex Metrica
- Yandex Music
- Yandex Eda
- Yandex Cloud
- Yandex Market
- Yandex Disk
- Yandex Mail
- Dzen News
- Yandex Translate
- Yandex Alice
See also
References
- ↑ "Search Engine Market Share Russian Federation". Statcounter. July 2024. Archived from the original on 24 Jul 2024. Retrieved 16 Aug 2025.
- ↑ "Yandex Legal documents". Yandex. Archived from the original on 20 Aug 2025. Retrieved 16 Aug 2025.