Russians more likely to say Yo Yandex than Go Google

By Davey Winder
Saturday, 28 June 2008 18:28

Home IT

Everybody, it might seem, uses Google to search the Internet. But not the Russians. They are far more likely to use Yandex, the most popular search engine you have never heard of. Yet!

Although you may well be scratching your head when the Yandex search engine is mentioned, this is no newbie looking for a little space in the shadows of Google, Yahoo! and Windows Live Search. Yandex actually got off the ground, in Moscow, way back in 1997.

Since then, this search engine that understands the hugely complex grammar of Russian linguistics has gone on to capture some 44 percent of the Russian search market. According to comScore that puts it a good 10 points ahead of Google.

In fact, it puts Yandex firmly into the second most popular search engine in Europe position. Not bad for a search engine nobody has heard of outside the former Eastern Bloc countries. Yet the surprises have not finished, because according to BusinessWeek Yandex is set to go public on Nasdaq and do so with quite a splash.

"Yandex is expected to list its shares on Nasdaq this fall, fetching as much as $2 billion"  BusinessWeek says, adding "That would be Russia's largest-ever initial public offering in tech, valuing the company at around $5 billion."

Let's not forget that Russia, whether it be in tech or in oil, is currently something of a hot potato. That rare breed of an economy that seems to be bucking the credit crunch doom and gloom. As such, investors everywhere want a piece of Russian success.

Just what is the state of the Russian online economy? Read on to find out...

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