Well it’s been several hours now since Yandex launched their new global index; Yandex.com. The reaction, judging by Twitter, seems overwhelmingly positive. Having had time to explore, here are some of my observations on the new service. Interesting Launch Strategy As has been pointed out on both the English and Russian side, this was a [...]

Today, Yandex launched their long-awaited global search engine, Yandex.com. They have now moved from being a Russian-only service to a global search player, competing in several country-markets. As they state in the press release, this has been a long journey. I’ve been talking about this since 2008, when Yandex mentioned their plans at the CIB.ru [...]

[К русской версии] The next meeting for the Russian Tech Delegation (RusTechDel) is taking place in the meeting area next to the Yandex offices (16 Ulitsa Leva Tolstogo) on the Monday 24th May, from 4-7 pm. We thank Yandex, Arkady Volozh (Yandex CEO) and Esther Dyson (EDventure.com) for their support. The aim of the RusTechDel [...]

Vkontakte.ru the leading social media network in Russia has released new rules on applications [in Russian w/ Vkontakte access]. Previously Vkontakte developers had been able to offer users virtual currency for inviting their friends to participate in the applications. This in effect encouraged application users to spam and create fake user profiles. Andrey Rogozov, Commercial [...]

A new project for Runet web-analysts, called Infact.ru, has just been launched. It is non-commercial, and the main target is to spread accurate data on the Russian Internet market to the Western media. This is a great initiative for those interested in Russian marketing and the guys behind this start-up are experts on the subject. [...]

The MoscowTimes reports that FaceBook is in talks on cooperation with Russian mobile operators and is opening up an office in Russia. Within a few days, Facebook will announce the opening of its Russian office, said Unova Media, organizer of the Russian Internet Technologies conference, where Andrew Bosworth, Facebook’s top software engineer, made a presentation. [...]

[К русской версии] The first follow up meeting for the Russian Tech Delegation (RusTechDel) is taking place at the Yandex offices at 16 Ulitsa Leva Tolstogo on the Sunday 18th April, from 3-6 pm. We thank Yandex, Arkady Volozh (Yandex CEO) and Esther Dyson (EDventure.com) for their support. The aim of the meeting is to [...]

Yandex, the leading search engine in Russia has released their own branded version of the Chrome browser. It’s an interesting move to co-opt the browser technology associated with Google, and use it to further the Yandex brand. Isn’t Chrome Licensed To Google? Although Google holds trademarks on “Google Chrome” and “Chromium”, the terms “Chrome” or [...]

If you’ve not played with the Yandex Blog Pulse tool, then it’s well worth adding it your bookmarks. Unlike the Google Trends tool, the Yandex one takes their data from the blogosphere, as indexed by their engine. This data gives you some useful insight into hot trends and popular topics and keywords in Runet at [...]

The Trans-Siberian Railway is the longest stretch of railway in the world. The epic 9226 km journey covers 1/3rd of the planet, 7 time zones, 2 continents, 12 regions and 87 cities. Now Google, in partnership with the Russian Railways has brought this journey to your desktop. By clicking on the map you can view [...]