Russia's largest tech conglomerate, known mostly in the West for its search engine. Called the "Google of Russia," the Yandex search component was developed by Arkady Volozh and Ilya Segalovich and went live in 1997. Yandex, which stands for the English words "yet another indexer" caters primarily to Russian-speaking people, although it has offices in several countries, including the U.S. in Silicon Valley. Yandex headquarters is in Moscow, but the company was reincorporated in the Netherlands.
Like Google, Yandex is involved in many tech projects including email, advertising, music streaming and self-driving cars. In 2017, Yandex also partnered with Uber to offer taxi service in Russia.
In 2022, the company was widely condemned outside of Russia as well as by most of its employees after refusing to publish the truth about the Ukraine invasion. Uber indicated it is accelerating divestment from the company. See
search engine and
Google.