Yandex, the leading Russian search engine has signed a deal with Kaspersky Anti-Virus to bundle their software free of charge into their desktop application, Ya Online.

Kaspersky has an understandably strong following in Russia, where it was founded in 1997. Although the companies head office is still in Moscow, they have expanded globally with offices in UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Japan, China, Korea, Romania and the United States. Their brand is widely known across the internet. Bundling their software in Ya Online should dramatically increase the number of downloads for the search engine.

This move also shows their continued commitment to free application development for their users, a strategy that has worked well for Google. So far Yandex has also developed Yandex.Money (PayPal like system), Maps, Post (Email) and desktop search, as well as their contextual advertising system for webmasters, Yandex Direct.

The Ya Online application is free desktop software, which connects to Yandex’s mail service “Yandex Pochte” (Yandex Post), allows users to search and gives them information on the weather and traffic in Moscow. Launched last September, Yandex estimate they already have 200’000 users.

The Ya Online application can be downloaded here

Technorati Tags: Anti-Virus, Kaspersky, Ya Online, Yandex

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