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 the Russian Cyrillic “Хром” seem fair game.

Both version of Chrome are based on the Chromium project. This project has an open source license on their software, which lets anyone make derivative projects as long as these are also freely distributed.

In turn the Chromium project took much of it’s intellectual property from the Open Source Mozilla platform, the engine behind Firefox. Key Mozilla employees are working with Google and Chromium while still contributing to Mozilla projects.

Why Have Yandex Done This?

It’s a smart marketing move. As Chrome builds in popularity in Russia, Yandex can take advantage of that brand. This is not the first time though that they have released branded software, they have teamed up with Firefox and ICQ available.

Also they may have diffused some of Google’s strategy if Chrome browser share increases. Both Google Chrome and Yandex Chrome seem to be similarly identified in analytics packages. By supporting the Chrome project they can distance it from the Google brand and share any market success.

How Does Chrome Perform in the Russian Market?

Compared to the US market, Chrome has achieved a similar or slightly better penetration into the Russian market. Matt Cutts shows Chrome figures in the states vary between 2.84% to 4%. LiveInternet suggests the browser has a 3.6% market share in Russia.

Russian Browser Penetration By Version

By specific browser version, Firefox 3 is the most commonly used with 22.7% market share. The Russian market is the best performing world-wide for Opera Software, who holds significant market share for their desktop browsers and mobile browser (Opera Mini).

Russian Browser Penetration By Brand

Technorati Tags: Chrome, Chromium, Firefox, Google, Russia, Yandex

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 any section of the route on video – shot from the window of the train as it moves through the Russian countryside.

You can jump ahead to key beauty-spots on the map, such as Lake Baikal, the Barabinskaya steppe and the immense Zeisko-Bureinskaya plain. See dawn break over the Zeya river. At key points on the journey you can tour towns, with the presenter Yelena Abitayeva. Also scattered along the route are spectacular pictures of Russian landscapes from the photographer Anton Lange.

There is over 150 hours of footage in the project so you probably don’t want to watch it all in the one sitting. For entertainment the project provides an audio-book of the appropriately epic “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy but unfortunately this is only in Russian. The balalaika music on offer needs no translation but the radio option is more likely soundtrack to the journey.

“This project was very special for us”, Konstantine Kuzmin, Marketing Director for Google Russia was quoted in The Moscow Times. “We want to demonstrate how unusual and fascinating Russia really is and how much is can offer to a devoted tourist. We hope this project will become the starting point not only for virtual but also for real trips across Russia.”

View the project in English

Technorati Tags: Google, railways, Russia, trans-siberian

ComScore has released a study of the global search market showing that more than 113 billion searches were conducted in July 2009, representing a 41% increase versus year ago. As expected Google was No.1 with 76.7 billion searches conducted, or 67.5% global market share. However the Russian portal, Yandex showed the fastest rate of growth with 94% more searches than July 08.

LiveInternet, the Russian statistics site also gives positive news for Yandex, showing that they hold 51% market share against Google’s 30%. This figure is boosted by the continued rise of Mail.ru (10%), who uses Yandex search results to power their portal.

My friend Andy Atkins-Krüger has written an excellent summary today on why Yandex is doing so well (SearchEngineWatch.com).

Technorati Tags: ComScore, Google, Mail.ru, Yandex

Josh Catone over at SitePoint reports that Firefox has decided to drop Google as their default search option for Yandex. This will effect all the versions they release for the Russian market. According to Mozilla General Counsel Harvey Anderson, the reason behind the change was a study of Russian user behavior conducted by Mozilla that concluded that Russian users wanted direct access to Yandex more than Google.

This is quite a blow for Google in the Russian market, where they are trying to gain ground against the market leader, Yandex who currently holds 46.8% market share against their 33%.

Firefox itself has been gaining popularity in Russia, where the browser landscape has been traditionally dominated by Internet Explorer and Opera. The latter holds their largest market share worldwide in Russia with 17.4% for Opera and 7.1% for Opera Mini. Firefox now holds 20% market share, leaving IE with only 50% coverage in Russia.

Hat tip to Andrey Petrov for the graph

Technorati Tags: Browsers, Firefox, Google, Opera, Russia, Yandex

According to Interfax, Googles proposed deal to puchase the contexual ad provider, Begun.ru, for $140m was shot down by the Russian Anti-Monopoly Service (FAS) on Thursday.

The reason cited has been a lack of clear information on the “individuals who can exert influence on the activity of the Google group, as well as a list of persons belonging to the Google group, including those outside Russia”. Without this information, the FAS board do not feel they can “objectively judge the impact on competition in the market for Internet search in our country”. Plus they have “concerns” that competitive conditions will be made worse by reducing the number of large players.

Ever since the deal was announced industry experts have speculated that Begun’s future is in doubt, considering that Google has such a well developed contexual ad system and brand of its own (Adwords). The value in Begun seems to lie with their contextual contracts, trained support staff and business customers. Rumours have also been circulated that Google was planning to provide organic results to Rambler as part of the deal. Either of these moves would effectively remove players from the Russian search scene.

“We’re very disappointed”, said Google PR Director in Russia, Alla Zabrovskaya. “We continue to believe that this transaction has improved the range of opportunities for Russian Internet users, advertisers, as well as the development of the industry as a whole. We now await the decision in the hands of the FAS and then will decide on our future actions”.

This is a massive blow to Google in the Russian market, which they recently estimated to be worth $1bn by 2011. This purchase would have consolated their position against market leaders Yandex. Begun.ru provides contexual advertising streams to a range of high profile sites, notably Rambler, the oldest search engine in Russia.

According to LiveInternet, Yandex holds 44.7%, against Google with 34.6%. Rambler has seen their market share plummet this year to 7.1% from 17% this time last year, despite the appointment of Ex-Yahoo! European Head Mark Opzoomer. Mail.ru, the other major player in Russian search has seen a rise in marketshare to 7.7%. Having cancelled a deal to carry Google’s contextual adverts in January of 2007, they have since been in partnership with Yandex.

So what does this FAS ruling mean? According to RosFinCom, things may not be so bad. The deal may still go through once Google meets the demands of the FAS board. “Finam” Vladislav Kochetkov agreed, “In our view, there is a great likelihood that the transaction will soon take place”. Not so, says Alexander Kuznetsov, an analyst at ING Wholesale Banking, who suggests the FAS is just looking for formal reasons to reject the deal. He maybe right.

As Kuznetsov points out, the marketshare Google will gain is not such a monopoly. He proposes that together they would only occupy 21% of the market. LiveInternet would put that nearer to 42% against Yandex with 53%. However you can find much higher percentages in the Russian telecommunications industry that have failed to draw regulator concern. Russian industry is defined by monopolies.

If this is not due to the marketshare, could it be more to do with Google’s position as a foreign company? Russian lawmakers have been taking an increasing interest in the Internet and pushed to have it included as a sector “strategically important to national security” in a law passed this April. That would have required foreign investors wishing to purchase more than 50% of a Russian company related to the Internet to obtain the approval of the Russian Government.

The bill was amended after intervention by President Medvedev but the list of strategic sectors still includes television/radio broadcasting and publishing. Companies that hold a dominant position in providing internet and telephone services are also included. In those cases, the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service can apply “limitations”. The FAS definition of “dominant” is defined for us by Russian Law News:

Article 5 of the New Law states that unless otherwise demonstrated, a business entity with more than 50% market share is presumed dominant; and less than 35% market share is generally not dominant. However, a group of up to three market leaders may be deemed dominant if they have aggregate market share of 50%; and the same applies to a group of up to five market leaders with aggregate market share of 70% (unless one of them has a market share below 8%)

Are we currently seeing the first “limitations” placed on Google by the FAS, to prevent them developing a dominant position in Runet? The Russian authorities can be deeply suspicious of foreign companies and publicised connections between Google and the CIA are unlikely to work in their favour. It is certainly a strange request by the FAS to know more about “individuals who can exert influence on the activity of the Google group”.

Government protection would give the home-grown engine Yandex a significant advantage and prevent the market domination Google has enjoyed across US and Europe. If their advancement in Russia has just become political, this may prove to be the greatest challenge the US search giant has faced to date.

Technorati Tags: Begun, FAS, Google, Monolpoly, Russia, Russian Anti-Monopoly Service, Yandex

Google’s recent change of policy in the UK to allow PPC advertising for online gaming has re-opened the issue in the Russian markets. This Friday Google started to allow online gaming advertisers to again participate openly in their PPC program, Adwords.

As NewMediaAge reports, the initial ban was enforced as part of a company-wide, global move Google said at the time, but now the company’s industry head James Cashmore said it was ensuring that local markets were served in the appropriate manner.

“Dennis Woodside (Google VP and MD for UK, Benelux & Ireland) and the team have been reviewing policies both from a legal and user need point of view at a local level,” he said. “I definitely think that local markets will make more decisions in the future.”

In terms of the local Russian market Google would be looking closely at the gaming legislation signed into law at the start of 2007. While this law covered rules for offline advertising in the industry it has been vague in regard to online advertising. It merely carried one sentence stating that internet gambling was prohibited.

There was no mention of advertising and to date, nothing has been done to online gaming sites. No mention was made of penalties, differences between national and international gaming operators or how they defined “gaming” (i.e. how did this law affect software which allowed free or non-monetory play).

Despite this lack of clarification the leading Russian search engine, Yandex stopped accepting gaming advertisers into their PPC systems. A few months after Rambler, the no.2 engine followed suite. Yandex made have been siding with caution or taking a moral stand, similar to Google’s own.

The structure of the legislation focused on where gaming advertising was allowed, so by omission some felt online advertising had been made illegal. Others disagreed, suggesting that the question of online environment had not been addressed by the bill. The single sentence tacked onto the end of another point did not indicate the online marketplace was considered seriously by Russia’s legislators, who have sometimes struggled to keep up with the new technology.

The key would be in the clarification of the Russian legislation on gaming advertising. Rather than a one-line addition to the bill, gaming operators need to know the rules on online advertising in Russia. Online gaming is a very competitive sector in Russia and could prove a significant revenue source for the search engines in the current financial climate.

The main effect of Google’s u-turn on the issue maybe to re-open the topic for discussion by the major engines here. Google has recently signed a deal with Rambler to provide them with contextual advertising, should this stream include gaming advertisers there will be considerable pressure on Yandex to reverse their policy.

Technorati Tags: gambling, Google, online gaming, poker, PPC

This interview is a little old but well worth watching if you are interested in the Russian Internet. It was carried out in April this year by the Russia Today network with Vladimir Dolgov, Head of Google Russia. RT do not offer embedded video, so just click this link or the image below.

Technorati Tags: Google, Vladimir Dolgov

This week Facebook has managed to throw MySpace from the No.1 spot, putting “considerably distance” between the two sets of audience figures. Facebook drew a massive 132m viewers in June while MySpace managed just 117.5m. The reason for this success? Facebook decided to embrace the multilingual audience and deliver the service in a range of languages.

Facebook has done an exceptional job of leveraging its brand internationally during the past year,” commented comScore vice president Jack Flanagan said in an official release.

By increasing the site’s relevance to local markets through local language interface translation, the site is now competing strongly or even capturing the lead in several markets where it had a relatively minor presence just a year ago.

There’s are lessons here for anyone not yet convinced about investing in a multilingual strategy for their business or services. First, you’re ignoring a significant revenue source. If you need further convincing, look at Google’s Q1 report for this year; 51% of their profits are now earned outside the United States.

The second lesson is that if you do not take your services into these markets, others will. Take the example of YouTube.com, the popular video sharing service. The lack of multilingual support on the platform left the door open for RuTube.ru, the Russian version, to take a dominant marketshare in the country. The popularity of YouTube would have raised user awareness for the service and helped secure investment.

Clever VCs are looking at internet business models in the west with an eye to investing in localized versions. RuTube successfully took $15m USD in investment earlier this year. Microblogging platforms such as MBlogi or SMSter have sprung out of the Twitter revolution. The Chinese incarnation, Komoo.cn is even less subtle.

Although people may cry foul and claim these ideas are cloned, there is little they can do to stop this process. Patents are difficult enough to obtain on these applications, let alone when people try to apply them internationally. Lack of action by the origional brand led to an unoccupied niche and an opportunity for local players.

In the case or RuTube, they have hit the ground running and solidified their position through local media deals. They can show Russian content at high speeds to local users. They have leveraged the brand to become the “YouTube of Russia”.

The best defense is offense. If you have a business model that can be exported to another market, consider adopting a multilingual strategy. Not doing so may hand the opportunity to someone else. Next month I’ll be giving you some practical advice on how to setup such a strategy and what points are important to consider.

Technorati Tags: Facebook, Google, MySpace, RuTube, YouTube

On the 27th July, Radio Station Ekho Moskvi (Moscow Echo) invited the ex-Managing Director of Rambler for an interview on the latest deal between Rambler and Google. This is an English translation of the show you can watch below:

Igor Ashmanov started his interview with answering some questions about his web service, search engine analyzer http://www.analyzethis.ru/, which gives a comparative analysis and operational data of search engines working on the Russian search market.

The first question was absolutely obvious, and has been widely discussed in the Russian media recently; Is Rambler dead?

No, not yet. Although, my point of view is very subjective. No, it is not dead. But the step made by Rambler towards using Google search on their portal is ambiguous. The issue of using Google search instead of leading development and investing in their own search engine was discussed in 2000 when Rambler was bought by a group of investors.

Igor also pointed out that the Google agreement terms are very harsh for the party using it on their site. Google doesn’t allow to change their search results. So Rambler will be obliged to show it as it is.

Yandex or Google, who will be the leader?

Rambler was #1 search engine in runet for a long period of time. Only at the beginning of 2003 it began to lose its position. People say, it seems that none uses Rambler today, what is absolutely not true. Rambler has very specific users, it has always been a search engine for internet geeks (hard users).

Internet novices tended to use Yandex more because it was for teenagers. 12% of runet searchers still use Rambler. It is the 3rd most popular portal in Runet (after Mail.ru and Odnoklassniki.ru). Today they start positioning Rambler as a multi service portal like Yahoo.

Still will the main struggle for search take place between Google and Yandex?

The situation is quite unstable. In case Rambler uses Google search on the portal, Google takes another 10%-12% of the search share. Another possible situation is that Mail.ru leaves Yandex Search for Google, just because Google pays more. In this case Google has another 8% share.

Rambler has its obvious unique search features. When it abandons its own search engine and uses Google Search, will it lose some of its obvious characteristics for user?

Having its own search technology is an advantage. Search engines can collect some important user data and surfing habits and improve their results. So from the point of view of Rambler leaving back its search engine is a strategic fault.

Are there any new search engines to take part in the competition for search in Runet, for example, Gogo.ru or others?

Mail.ru doesn’t have a strong understanding whether they need their own search engine or not. Mail.ru is a multi service portal specializing in communications. They can always speculate that they can use their own search engine instead of Yandex or Google.

In this case they will have to invest money and people, the main problem is in finding people and creating a team for that. So if Mail.ru creates its own search engine, it will have 10% share like Rambler. At the moment Gogo.ru (Mail.ru) is not indexing the whole runet, it has limitations and it is unstable.

What about Nigma.ru as a potential competitor?

Nigma is a meta search engine. They have their own index which is not big, many times less than Google or Yandex have. Moreover they have a deal with Yandex and are showing Yandex context ads.

Nigma is popular today because people think they will get more relevant results when they search in several search engines at a time. But I doubt the results are really relevant.

What is the difference in search results between Google and Yandex?

There are different search queries. Google and Yandex are strong in different search queries:

Information search – Google is stronger.

Navigation query, for example when we search for some domain – it has always been the strong point of Google, but since last summer Yandex results are also getting better.

Transaction search (when you want to buys something, pay for something, service search) – Yandex is strong here due to Yandex.Market.

That is why average Internet searcher uses Google and Yandex for different things.

What about Yandex index in the foreign Internet?

Yandex has now 1 billion pages in its index.

What happens if Mail.ru applies Google search instead of Yandex on the portal? Does it influence somehow the market?

8% search share depends now on Mail.ru. In Case Mail.ru puts Google logo it will surely influence Google brand recognition in runet. So it can influence on the search market on the whole.

What has changed from the old times of runet (96-97)?

In those times search queries were much simpler. It was a one word query. But today with the information rise the query is lengthening. People more and more are asking questions to search engines. We are coming more closer to natural language. Search engines will be forced to understand such queries as natural questions asked by users.

What are search shares today?

Due to LiveInternet statistics Yandex has 56% in working days and 52% at weekends. Google on the contrary has 21% and 25%. What does it mean? Yandex is used by office people, not hard users of Internet. Google is used by internet geeks, attached to Internet and having Internet connection at home.

For Google it is a question of positioning themselves on the market to make a step forward to average and mass users.

What about providing opportunities for news search from Google and Yandex. Is there any difference?

Igor Ashmanov pointed out they have their own news aggregating project, novoteka.ru . Sure they will never have so many visitors as Yandex have. Google is new to News search. This feature has been available since last year. But the drawback of Google that it aggregates for Russian users not only Russian news, but also news from Ukraine or Belarus.

Google had also problems with Russian morphology, in case of search called machine morphology. So they took some free morphology and set it for their needs.

What is the future for a national search engines?

National search engines are still strong in China, Czech Republic, Korea. They have potential to grow. Yandex share is growing due to that Rambler is losing its share, Google and Yandex both take up the users.

In English they have the verb googled, why we don’t have yandex something?

In Russian we have to use endings foe verbs. So it will sound like Яндекснуть (yandexnut’). Hard for the Russian ear.

What about mobile search, who is leading here?

Mobile search in runet is still not occupied and doesn’t have a leader. And still there are 5 times more owners of mobile phones in Russia than Internet users. So there are potential searchers.

Google has the potential to be the leader here as it can have agreements with mobile phone producers like Nokia, or telecommunication companies like MTS or Beeline (Google can simply pay for entering this market). Several local projects feel good on mobile market like Wap start. Some companies even sell context ads, Mobile direct.

Technorati Tags: Ashmanov, Gogo, Google, Mail.ru, Rambler, Runet

Bloomburg are reporting on the comments made by Vladimir Dolgov, Head of Google Russia, that online ad sales will jump fivefold in Russia to reach $1 billion in 2010.

In 2010, Google believes its operations in Russia could be tapping a billion dollar Internet advertising market. 2007 saw Russia grow to a $200 million bonanza in online ads. Two years from now may make that a fleeting, unprofitable memory.

Vladmir Dolgov said online advertising as a whole has caught fire in Russia, with 75,000 companies out of three million registered firms indulging in online ads. Online ad sales reached $200 million last year and have more than doubled every year for the past four, Dolgov said.

Russia will have almost 40 million personal computers this year, according to a Communications Ministry forecast, up from more than 31 million last year. The number of Internet users in the country of 142 million people will rise to 46 million, up from 35 million in 2007.

Yandex still dominates the market in Russia but Google appears to have made gaining ground in Russia a higher priority of late. They have started offline advertising in the Moscow underground and several online campaigns to increase user numbers.

Technorati Tags: Bloomberg, Google, Yandex