Russian Search Engine Yandex Fortifies its Position
July 12, 2011
Search Engine Watch reports that “Yandex and Rambler Band Together Against Google Russia.” Unlike in most markets, Google is not the supreme search engine in Russia. Yandex holds that position, and it has no intention of letting it slip away.
To that end, the company has partnered with Rambler, a Russian web portal that reaches 4.2 million users, not including its side branches. Writer Rob D. Young puts the match into perspective for Americans:
In some ways, this deal looks similar to Microsoft’s partnership with Yahoo: Yandex is running Rambler’s search and ad element in much the same way as Bing is running Yahoo’s. However, the purpose is quite different. While Microsoft and Yahoo were joining forces in a bid for survival against the monolithic beast that is Google, Yandex is already the superior entity (64.8 percent of search market share) and is fighting to keep a one-sided fight going in its favor. It would be more like if Yahoo had decided to throw its chips in with Google back in 2010.
Google faces a challenge here. As that company chases Facebook and pursues its mobile vision, Yandex is poised to siphon off search traffic. Has Google’s focus become too scattered? If Google gets distracted with me too plays in social media and playing the global mobile operating system game, Yandex could become a better search engine and do to Google what Google did to other search systems in 1998 and 1999. Interesting.
Stephen E Arnold, July 12, 2011
From the leader in next-generation analysis of search and content processing, Beyond Search.
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