
Yandex.Browser for Linux - rev
http://browser.yandex.ru/beta/
======
Gonzih
Now your private information can go directly to the russian government using
this amazing fork of google chrome.

~~~
badname
Sounds like you were ok with sharing with western governments (regular
chrome).

~~~
lern_too_spel
In the US and most Western countries, that data can only be accessed with a
warrant or other court order.

In Russia, the prosecutor can demand the data himself. Bloggers with at least
3000 followers automatically get put under surveillance
([http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/russian-blogger-law-
puts...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/russian-blogger-law-puts-new-
restrictions-on-internet-
freedoms/2014/07/31/42a05924-a931-459f-acd2-6d08598c375b_story.html)), and the
surveillance infrastructure is modern
([http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SORM](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SORM)).

~~~
izacus
You might have missed all the Snowden / NSA posts if you think the first
paragraph is really true.

~~~
lern_too_spel
I didn't miss those disclosures. None of them contradict my first paragraph.

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nslqqq
I dont see a point in using yet another proprietary branded chromium, that
sends info to yandex instead of google.

~~~
muyuu
Makes sense to those who'd rather phone Moscow than Mountain View.

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nly
Seems like a natural progression. Yandex gets a significant chunk of Russian
search traffic and also offer email and cloud storage. Presumably the default
search engine will be Yandex...

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chatman
The sad thing is that it doesn't run on GNU/Linux natively, but runs via Wine.

~~~
nslqqq
I think thats incorrect. It was made from chromium which has native linux
support. In fact, I unpacked archive and I couldnt see any wine parts

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gnufied
Whoa, It automatically imports everything from Chrome. Which includes cookies
(and as extension login sessions), bookmarks, extensions etc.

Is it just me or - I find that somewhat scary.I daresay, I would expect Chrome
to encrypt sensitive information it saves on disk. Yandex does not seem to
have imported the plaintext passwords thankfully, but I don't think I trust a
new service with this much of private information.

In other words - Chrome, please stop random applications from copying my login
sessions and cookies.

~~~
Maakuth
That isn't necessarily very easy thing to implement. If the data is accessible
by one application, how could it not be available by some other application
running with the same credentials? Maybe some "vault" daemon running as a
different user could do, but then it would only take reverse engineering the
client part from Chrome (if it wouldn't be open source via Chromium already).
And all this to protect the application data from other application user is
willingly running? TL;DR: don't run applications you don't trust.

~~~
gnufied
If you have configured Chrome with a Google account, on Linux - for me, it
does ask me for password on restart. I am assuming the password is for
decrypting the passwords it stores in browser's "manage passwords".

Overall, I think either:

a. Chrome can use that account password for decrypting the other senstive
information too. b. or it can integrate with keychain of operation system. If
I am not wrong, each time a new application accesses keychain of OS, OS
prompts for user's password.

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mariuolo
Where's the source?

~~~
JetSpiegel
Just after Chrome's source.

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gear54rus
Just like I switched off Opera when it became a webkit fork, I do not see any
reason in installing another one.

From my experience, Yandex is only good for one thing: Russian maps. Their
accuracy and features are still unparalleled on Russian territory.

When it comes to browser though, I would still use Chrome if I wanted WebKit,
FireFox if I wanted features and Opera 12 if I wanted great user experience.

~~~
Grue3
>Their accuracy and features are still unparalleled on Russian territory.

2GIS blows Yandex out of the water as long as you're in one of the many cities
it supports.

~~~
gear54rus
I think last time I tried it, it was behind on the nav part. Did they improve
it? Does it allow setting marks for other drivers? Does it show traffic jams?

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rmsaksida
How does Yandex compare against Google? Is their search experience and their
algorithms similarly advanced?

~~~
samdb
We built a site for a Russian supermarket and tried using Yandex maps as
that's what they wanted. Was accurate for Russian addresses, as you would
expect, but ended up switching for Mapbox so we could heavily customise it.

~~~
colinbartlett
Yandex maps is way more accurate and way more pervasive in Russian than Google
Maps in my experience.

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rev
Download page is in Russian, but the interface is in English when installed.
International site ([http://browser.yandex.com](http://browser.yandex.com))
still has "We're working on it".

~~~
dewey
Looks like they did work on it. Working now, including a download for Mac and
Windows.

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kolev
So much anti-Russian sentiment - why is Hacker News so full of politics!? Are
NSA or GCHQ any better? The thing is that other countries don't trust stuff
built in the US anymore and you will see more and more of these.

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rev
Some useful extensions like LastPass, Adguard, Pocket and Evernote are
packaged (but not enabled) by default. Functionally it's Yandexified Chromium
(vs Googlized Chromium aka Chrome—and modulo UI chrome of course).

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dkuznetsov
Nice try, KGB!

