
Firefox in Russia dumps Google for Yandex - epi0Bauqu
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10138969-2.html
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andrewl-hn
I know many people in Russia use Yandex quite a lot. I actually prefer Yandex
to Google when I search for something in Russian. When I needs something in
English I uses Google or Yahoo though. By the way Yandex has a lightweight
home page which I actually like more than Google's: <http://ya.ru>.

There are only for links on this page: Upper left: make yandex a start page.
Upper right: log into mail. Lower left: yandex.ru - heavy page with news and
links to other services. Lower right: page designer company.

Their web email client is very lightweight and fast. It works faster than
GMail on my 5 years old laptop which is nice. Other services are Ok, too.

Yandex is the most popular search engine in Russia with more than 50% market
share. It comes as a default search engine in Opera Mini and as a Speed Dial
engine in Opera Desktop (which has about 20% market share in Russia).

And they also provide an 'optimized' version of Firefox 3 from their own site
(toolbar, home page, and default search engine). When Firefox 3 was released
this optimized version was heavily advertised on Russian internet and I know
quite a few people who use that.

And no, I'm not a Yandex employee. I don't even live in Russia now. I just
thought it might be a good idea to tell about because there not that many
people who can read Russian

~~~
d0mine
You might like <http://yandex.ru/white.html>

Yandex claims 10M unique IPs per month
[http://stat.yandex.ru/?Age=m&sort=3&SDay=0&FDay=...](http://stat.yandex.ru/?Age=m&sort=3&SDay=0&FDay=0&SMonth=0&FMonth=0&SYear=2000&FYear=2000)

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kwamenum86
This means that Google search is not as invincible abroad as it is the the US.
I bet others will take a cue from Yandex and start search engines in other
countries where Google (or Yahoo) is vulnerable (there are many from what I
understand).

Why do so many Russians prefer Yandex over Google?

~~~
andrewl-hn
I would say that's because it was created with Russian internet (Runet) in
mind.

For example when you enter something in the search box but forget to switch
language on your keyboard it will detect it and provide right results with
'did you mean..'.

Also most websites on Runet just sucks. Pages are badly formed with lots of
adds and without any SEO and Accessibility in mind. Sometimes when the page
does actually contain a relevant information Google will give it a pour
pagerank because of pour Signal vs. Noise ratio or because it's far from the
top of the page. Poorly formed pages are hard for search engines to deal with
but it seems Yandex does a better job (at least in Runet).

Yandex Maps has a Killer feature - you can measure distances with a simple
tool. I have no idea why no one else does that!

Another important thing: Google is not faster (if not slower) than Yandex in
Russia. That's something which I notice when I compared Yahoo! and Google
while I lived there. Yahoo is a little bit slower than Google and when one
makes a couple of searches (trying different words and phrases) it becomes
really annoying. Yandex doesn't have this problem. Moreover it loaded faster
when I used it outside of Moscow in regions with a slower internet connection
(may be their datacenter was closer, I don't know).

And if you consider entering the url in the address bar it's even faster to
type ya.ru vs. google.com. Of course it's not an issue now when I use browser
hotkeys (type 'y search term' or 'g search term') but from my experience there
are lots of people who still type the URL.

But the major key to success was a large ad campaign on TV when Runet was
really young and small and no one heard about Google yet. I remember the time
when I knew about two websites: Yandex and Mail.ru and those two still mean
internet to my mom. Yandex became a synonym to 'search' alongside with
Rambler. But unlike the later Yandex keeps innovating and it's still ahead of
Google which surpassed Rambler last year.

I'm pleased to see that there are countries where Google does not own the
market. Unfortunately it’s not the case in Europe where people use it 99% of
the time even though there are great local search engines. Competition is
great and it’s the only thing that drives the innovation.

It’s really funny when one person says to other 'Just google that' and the
other opens Yandex and search but in Russia it’s the usual thing.

~~~
Silentio
Is "Runet" a discrete internet, or is it just what Russian websites are seen
to be a part of as a sort of internet language subculture?

~~~
illicium
It's basically just a colloquial term for all Russian-language websites. Just
like the English-speaking Internet has various social news and blog sites that
almost "glue" it together (Digg, Reddit, Y.C, Facebook, 4chan, etc), Runet has
the appropriate equivalents (Livejournal, VKontakte, dirty.ru, 2ch.ru, etc)

~~~
ntoshev
I believe the Russian ISPs are highly interconnected, so Russian users get
more bandwidth and less latency when they use local sites vs international.

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vaksel
no brainer really, Google is really struggling in Russia, and everyone uses
Yandex. It all comes down to usability. In USA everyone uses Google, so having
it embedded in Firefox adds to the experience. Now imagine if instead of
Google you had Lycos as the default setting.

~~~
jodrellblank
Like if you open IE and it has MSN Live Search as the default.

~~~
vaksel
well Microsoft never really cared about user experience

------
raquo
By the way, Yandex used to promote Firefox on their home page for a year or
even more probably (they promoted a build with yandex's toolbar, naturally)

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guruz
In Soviet Russia, Yandex dumps you.

~~~
froo
I was scrolling down the comments looking to see if someone was going to make
this joke.

Glad to find it at the bottom where it belongs - Thanks HN.

