Yandex may be in line to become the default search engine on devices that Apple sells in Russia. But for now it’s engaging in a little competition with Cupertino, and others. Today the Russian search giant is launching its own answer to iCloud: a free web-based storage product it’s calling Yandex.Disk.
Users of Yandex.Disk get up to 10 gigabytes of space that they can use for personal documents, photos, music and videos, and like iCloud and Microsoft’s Skydrive the service is aimed specifically at offering storage services that help keep users tied in to the rest of Yandex’s portfolio of products. The files can subsequently be accessed from any internet-enabled device. → Read More
More news from Yandex, Russia’s biggest search engine, that highlights the opportunity for more growth in digital in Russia and adjacent markets. One day after announcing a new real-time search partnership with Twitter, the company is reporting Q4 earnings: sales were at $200 million with net income of $71.3 million, both representing growth respectively of 56 percent and 51 percent on the same quarter a year ago. → Read More
A significant step for Twitter in its international growth: Yandex, Russia’s search giant, today announced that it will carry Twitter data in all of its search results.
The news also underscores one possible route to revenue generation for Twitter: Yandex describes this as a licensing deal. The terms of it were not disclosed but Microsoft reportedly paid Twitter $30 million for a similar search agreement. → Read More
Last week, Yandex, one of biggest search and advertising companies in Russia, announced that it would be teaming up with Microsoft, Nokia, HTC and Samsung to become the default search engine on both new and upcoming Windows Phones in Russia. This followed the news last month that Yandex is also set to become the search provider for bada-powered smartphones in Russia and the CIS. It’s been a good last few months for Yandex, as Robin pointed out last week, the company has steadily grown its share of the Russian search market to a point where it now owns 62.7 percent of the market in Q3 2011 — ahead of Google.
Today, the Russian search giant has announced another strategic move in its mobile strategy, as it has acquired SPB Software, a developer of mobile software that makes its home in Russia, Taiwan, and Thailand. As for the price, sources close to the deal say that it was set at approximately $38 million. → Read More
Yandex, the Russian online search and advertising giant, has teamed up with Microsoft, Nokia, HTC and Samsung to become the default search engine on the latest – and upcoming – Windows Phone smartphones in Russia.
Yandex’s search engine is currently installed on Samsung’s Оmnia W, which is already on sale in Russia, as well as on Nokia’s Windows Phone-powered Lumia 800 and Lumia 710 smartphones, which will hit stores in December. → Read More
Russian online search and advertising juggernaut Yandex this morning reported solid quarterly earnings, showing off increases in both revenues and net income, compared to 2010.
The company, which raised over $1.4 billion in a NASDAQ IPO earlier this year, reported revenues of RUR 5.2 billion ($161.9 million), up 65 percent compared with Q3 2010. → Read More
Yandex, one of the leading Internet companies in Russia, has acquired startup venture The Tweeted Times, which enables people to create custom online ‘newspapers’ generated from their Twitter accounts. Financial terms of the purchase were not disclosed, but Yandex says it aims to continue offering the social news service and that the entire The Tweeted Times team will be joining the search engine company.
The Tweeted Times was co-founded by Maxim Grinev and Maria Grineva, both computer scientists at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, and others. → Read More
Bubble or not, 2011 may go down as the year of the tech IPO. Not since the last bubble have we seen so many technology companies clamoring to go public. And halfway through the year, we still have many more companies who will be listing on either the NASDAQ or the NYSE in the next six months. Here’s a roundup of the tech companies that have gone public, where they are trading now, and who we can expect to see ringing the bell next.
Professional social network LinkedIn probably had the biggest IPO in terms of hype this year because it was one of the first big social media companies to go public. After pricing its IPO at $45 per share on the New York Stock Exchange, LinkedIn began trading at $83.00 per share on May 19, giving the company a $7.8 billion market cap. In the first day of trading, shares popped up to as high as $122.70, soaring past a $10 billion valuation. → Read More
Russian search giant Yandex has brought its email service to the iPhone in the form of a native app.
Users get full access to emails from their Yandex.Mail account, along with an IM feature and camera integration so that they take and send a photo all without leaving the iOS app. In addition, there’s support for external personal email accounts and a nifty location feature. → Read More
After pricing its IPO at $25 per share a few hours before the market opened, the Russian search giant’s share price jumped close to 40% immediately after its flotation.
The price per share opened this morning at $35, giving Yandex a market cap of roughly $11.2 billion at its debut. That means its value currently far surpasses that of LinkedIn, which went public last week (successfully, too). → Read More
Yandex, one of the leading Internet companies in Russia, this morning announced the pricing of its initial public offering of a little under 52.2 million Class A ordinary shares at $25.00 per share.
The shares will begin trading later today on NASDAQ under the symbol “YNDX”.
The company is thus raising a little over $1.3 billion, and has granted its underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 5.2 million shares to cover over-allotments. → Read More
As we wrote last week, Yandex, one of the leading Internet companies in Russia, filed for a public offering on NASDAQ under the symbol “YNDX”. Today, the company is announcing price range of the offering, which will be $20.00 to $22.00 per share. The company aims to raise as much as $1.2 billion from the sales of its shares, according to the filing.
Yandex proposes to sell 15,400,000 shares in the offering and certain of its shareholders propose to sell an aggregate of 36,774,088 shares. In addition, Yandex and the selling shareholders have granted the underwriters an option to purchase, in aggregate, up to an additional 5,217,405 shares to cover over-allotments, if any. The total amount of shares offered in the filing is 52,174,088 shares. → Read More
Yandex, one of the leading Internet companies in Russia, this morning announced that it has filed a registration statement with the SEC for a proposed initial public offering, as expected. The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the offering have not yet been determined, but the Wall Street Journal recently reported that the company had been given a preliminary valuation of between $6 billion and $9 billion ahead of the filing.
According to the filing, the proposed maximum aggregate offering price amounts to $1 billion, which should give you an indication of how much Yandex seeks to raise. → Read More
Russia’s leading search engine Yandex has announced that its now building its own maps courtesy of its purchase of mapping data provider GIS Technologies and associated licenses last year.
The first digital map built in-house is a detailed map of Moscow and the Moscow region. It shows two times as many buildings as its previous editions, while users can see recently built apartment buildings and shopping malls because the data is very up to date. Overall, the new map of Moscow and the Moscow region includes 204 detailed maps of towns and small communities, says the company. → Read More
Russia’s leading search engine Yandex has launched a new investment program for Russian startups as well as those from further afield.
The Yandex.Factory will invest “up to hundreds of thousands US dollars” in startups from Russia, the CIS region or, basically, anywhere that have demonstrated potential in their seed or early investment stage. → Read More
Russian search engine Yandex is having a busy week. After flicking the switch on its PayPal competitor Yandex.Money so that it supports other countries in the CIS region beyond Russia, the company has today unveiled Yandex.Translate, an online translation service based on “proprietary machine translation technology.”
The new service – Google Translate, anyone? – translates text or web pages in Russian into English or Ukrainian. It works the other way round too. Text and web pages in English or Ukrainian can also be translated into Russian. → Read More
Russian search engine Yandex has expanded its online payment system Yandex.Money – a local PayPal competitor – to other CIS countries, including Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan.
Launched in 2002, Yandex.Money enable users to transfer money between accounts and make payments via the Internet. It currently supports over 3,000 online retailers in Russia and internationally, including Skype. → Read More
Russian search engine Yandex has acquired Loginza, a local startup whose service allows developers to implement user authentication via the likes of Facebook, Twitter or OpenID-supported sites, without additional registration. Terms of the deal, which came about through Yandex’s “open days for startups”, an initiative as part of the Yandex.Start program, remain undisclosed.
As noted, Loginza’s single sign-in plugin supports authentication via Facebook and Twitter, along with Blogger, WordPress, VeriSign, AOL, Yahoo!, Flickr, Last.fm, LiveJournal, myOpenID and OpenID. It also supports authorization schemes of a number of Russian services: Yandex, Mail.Ru, Vkontakte, Rambler, WebMoney, Diary.ru and Loginza itself. → Read More
Russian search engine Yandex has acquired Loginza, a local startup whose service allows developers to implement user authentication via the likes of Facebook, Twitter or OpenID-supported sites, without additional registration. Terms of the deal, which came about through Yandex’s “open days for startups”, an initiative as part of the Yandex.Start program, remain undisclosed.
As noted, Loginza’s single sign-in plugin supports authentication via Facebook and Twitter, along with Blogger, WordPress, VeriSign, AOL, Yahoo!, Flickr, Last.fm, LiveJournal, myOpenID and OpenID. It also supports authorization schemes of a number of Russian services: Yandex, Mail.Ru, Vkontakte, Rambler, WebMoney, Diary.ru and Loginza itself. → Read More
Yandex, the leading Russian search engine thought to be mulling over an IPO for up to $1.5 billion, has added ‘Geo-targeted Ads’ to its arsenal, targeting local businesses who might otherwise not have an online presence. The feature itself doesn’t sound too innovative – on one level it amounts to sticking ads on a map – and is something that Google and others have been doing for yonks, but given Yandex’s reach, it’s noteworthy nonetheless. The search engine claims 25 million users, with 11.5 million utilising the Yandex.Maps service. → Read More
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