Yandex sells a news aggregator and Zen Platform of VK

Yandex sells VK its news aggregator and Zen platform, and buys Delivery Club from VK food delivery service. The main page of Yandex will now be Ya.ru. It is reported by RBC.

The Yandex news aggregator will now be placed on the Zen Platform page. Couriers collaborating with Delivery Club will gain access to the Yandex platform, but the Delivery Club brand will remain.

Closing the transaction is scheduled until the end of 2022.

On the eve of the ex-head of Yandex.NOSTI, Leo Gershenzon announced the launch of the independent news aggregator The True Story. “Our task is to show the main events of the day and to give brief information and provide links to different materials of the media for each event, which write in detail about the event,” he explained .

The True Story service will have an English and Russian-speaking versions, Gershenzon said in an interview with Roskomvobod. In the English -speaking there will be 150 sources from 15 countries of the world. In the Russian -speaking there will be mainly independent media. “Our goal in Russia is to help oppressed publications. But, so that there is no imbalance, there are several official publications in the selection: Interfax, RBC, Kommersant, Vedomosti, RTVI. It seems so far that they are enough to represent the official mainstream agenda and, in general, the news picture is balanced, ”he said.

According to the businessman, the True Story team is still working on a volunteer basis. “But there is one grant, plus several funds are interested in the project. <...> I hope that after starting and receiving the feedback, the coverage will be larger and then we will again turn to investors and companies. Of course, in the regime of pure volunteering, the project will not be able to live long, ”he said.

Gershenzon headed the Yandex.NOVOS project from 2005 to 2012. After the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he called on Yandex to stop hiding information about the war and advised the company's employees to quit if they cannot affect what was happening.