The owner of Yandex, often dubbed “Russia’s Google,” has announced its decision to exit its home country. The Dutch-based parent company has successfully sold its Russian operation for 475 billion roubles ($5.2 billion; £4.2 billion), a figure significantly below its estimated market value. Consequently, Yandex’s Russian business has transitioned into a fully Russian-owned entity through the sale to a consortium of investors.
The move follows previous accusations against Yandex for concealing information about the conflict in Ukraine from the Russian public. Despite this, Moscow has embraced the latest deal, characterizing it as the outcome of an extensive 18-month planning and negotiation process.
Anton Gorelkin, the deputy head of the Russian parliament’s committee on information policy, expressed satisfaction with the development, stating, “This is exactly what we wanted to achieve a few years ago when Yandex was under threat of being taken over by Western IT giants.” He emphasized Yandex as more than a company, considering it an asset to Russian society.
Established during the dotcom boom in the late 1990s, Yandex evolved its own search engine, mapping, advertising businesses, and diversified into services such as taxis and food delivery. The $5.2 billion deal, though markedly lower than Yandex’s 2021 market value of approximately $30 billion, signifies a significant shift.
Despite its moniker as ‘Russia’s Google,’ Yandex is distinct from the U.S.-based search engine giant Google and its parent company Alphabet. The departure aligns with a broader trend of foreign-owned businesses exiting Russia, often under less favorable terms, following the country’s invasion of Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin has additionally ordered the seizure of assets belonging to Western brands like Danone and Carlsberg.
Yandex’s co-founder, Arkady Volozh, one of the few prominent Russian businessmen to publicly oppose Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, departed the firm in 2022. Facing sanctions from the European Union, Volozh challenges them, asserting no close ties with President Putin.
In response to Russian government content demands, Yandex had sold some online resources to the state-controlled rival VK in 2022. Despite positioning itself as independent, BBC Monitoring experiments in 2022 revealed Yandex’s search results omitting information about Russian atrocities in the Ukrainian city of Bucha, raising questions about its impartiality.
