2013 - year "Yandex"

We summarize the results of the year

In 2013, Yandex got into news feeds almost every week: the Russian technological giant launched the “islands” and dozens of services, opened the Kampus design school, and at the end of the year he also became the main character of the Russian comedy “Startup” (which, perhaps, should not be ranked for the merits of the company). We figured out what happened in Yandex in 2013 and how the company follows the path of Google.

Basic products

Among all the company's releases, two were the most important: Yandex’s own browser (it was launched at the end of last year, but the mobile application appeared only this summer), and the island’s platform presented in July. According to official figures, now about 1 million people per week use the new browser on its mobile devices. However, the largest Yandex project is the Islands . This is the name of an improved search, which shows not just a list of links in the results, but useful interactive answers, which are called "islands". In addition, the new service allocates key information in the answers - for example, if you are looking for the date of birth of a famous figure, the search will first show you it, and only then give a link to the article, for example, in Wikipedia.

Grigory Bakunov

Yandex Director for Technology Distribution

The “islands” in themselves is a certain abstract thing, more correctly to say that we switched from simply answers to questions to help in solving problems. Recently, sites turn into programs in the old understanding of this word - this is probably the biggest change in 2013. Modern Internet for most of us is a tool; People do not come to find some information, but in order to do something. “Islands” will help to quickly solve many problems: for example, for me the most relevant request is “Aeroflot registration”. I need to make an “island” where you can enter data, write it and forget it.

Probably, in the coming months of the “island” it will be available on the mobile, because their main goal is to solve problems, and on the mobile this pattern of use, when you need to do something quickly and go further, is much more pronounced. However, while the service is in beta version, because it is not only a technical platform, but also a complex system of interaction with webmasters. We are trying to understand how they want to use the "islands" and how our users want to do it. For example, there is such a problem: you enter the “plastic windows” request and get a page with ten snippets in each of which there is an “island”. From the point of view of the beneficiary, this is terrible, and therefore some part of the islands will be a click, some are deployed immediately, these are more likely the subtleties of psychology. That is why the service is still in beta version. ”

Business development in Turkey

Another important area of ​​Yandex’s activity is the development of business in Turkey, where the company launched a search engine created taking into account the characteristics of the Turkish language, and opened its office in 2011. Türkiye was chosen as a country with a developed Internet and a large number of online content in the local language. Now Yandex has become the second most popular search engine of this country, overtaking Bing and Yahoo. Google still leads. In addition to the search engine, the Yandex service is very popular in Turkey. Cards". Especially often it is used by the inhabitants of Istanbul, where the traffic jams on the roads are as big as in Moscow.

Grigory Bakunov:

“There are almost no countries in the world except Russia, where a local search engine is more popular than Google. In addition, there is a Czech Republic where the Czech company Seznam is the leader, but there is a ratio of almost 50 to 50. In all other Google countries, and all the rest after it. Entering new markets is very interesting, because it is always a very difficult process, especially if there is a monopoly. For Yandex, access to the Turkish market is largely associated with the unexpected success of our service with cards: I recently been in Istanbul, where there are quite a lot of traffic jams, and I realized that very many use our cards, because there are almost no analogues to this product in Turkey. ”

Educational projects

In addition to the data analysis school (the largest educational project “Yandex”, which opened in 2007) , another project appeared - “ Campus ” this year. This is a design school, headed by art director Dmitry Barbanel, is located near Moscow. Students of Kampus live outside the city for a month next to the mentor’s house and work with him on real orders, and also listen to lectures by specialists. Perhaps most graduates of Kampus will not work in Yandex, but the design for the company is now important than ever. “Last year, we began to actively build our design team, because now even in technological products at least 20% is a design, but this share may be higher,” Bakunov notes. This year, the team was joined by the former art director of the Publishing House of Poster Irina Voloshina, who is now engaged in media services in Yandex.

Grigory Bakunov:

“We give a Be payroll additional education, and therefore, in order to enter one of our schools, we need to go through a large competition. We are engaged in increasing the labor market: having finished one of our courses, the student can work anywhere, and not just in Yandex. In the requirements for some vacancies, representatives of other companies already write that they are looking for graduates of the data analysis school. We try to open schools in other cities of Russia, as well as in Kyiv, because state universities give theoretical knowledge, and we need very applied skills. ”

Losses

At the end of July 2013, Ilya Segalovich, co -founder of Yandex, died, who since 2003 served as the director of technology and the head of the development department. In addition, Segalovich was engaged in charity capacity and was one of Yandex volunteers-since 2006, the company's employees regularly went to orphanages in various cities of Russia and helped orphans.

Grigory Bakunov:

“This year there were sad events - in July, Ilya Segalovich died, and this was very reflected in the activities of the company and the mood of employees. He was half the soul of the company - now only Arkady Volozh remained. After the death of Ilya, we all mobilized in order to somehow replenish this loss, which influenced not only Yandex, but for the entire industry. I can’t say what its undertakings we continue: I basically participated in his public initiatives, and the rest can consider some other guides of his work priority. He was the ideologist of the company and the soul of many projects. ”