What is the difference that war makes?
Only a few months ago, Yandex stood out as a rare Russian business success story. It has grown from a small start-up to a high-tech colossal statue that not only dominates search and ride hailing across Russia, but also boasts a global reach.
The Yandex app allows you to call a taxi in a remote city like Abidjan in Côte d’Ivoire. Norway, Oslo; or Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The company delivered groceries in London, Paris and Tel Aviv. Fifty experimental Yandex robots ran around the Ohio State University campus in Columbus, bringing Grubhub food orders to students. It plans to expand to about 250 US campuses.
Often referred to as “Russia’s coolest company,” Yandex employs more than 18,000 people. Its founder was a millionaire. At its peak in November last year, it was worth more than $ 31 billion. After that, Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.
Almost overnight, its value dropped to less than $ 7 billion as Western investors withdrew from Russia and the Western government imposed strict economic sanctions. The Nasdaq Stock Exchange has stopped trading its shares.
A sudden dislike of most of Russia has led the company to close various international operations, including delivery services in London, Paris and Columbus.
Thousands of employees (almost one-sixth of the total) have fled the country. Its founder, Arkady Volozh, and his chief agent set aside after sanctioning both after the European Union accused them of betting on the Kremlin’s disinformation.
The company is not facing bankruptcy. But that sudden change in fate is not just a warning story for investors in authoritarian nations who rely on the whims of a single ruler. Yandex symbolizes the problems facing Russian companies in a rapidly changing economic climate and the growing division of war over society as a whole.
Established as an internet search engine before Google, Yandex provided a myriad of services such as e-commerce, maps, music streaming, cloud storage, and self-driving cars. Foreign investors loved it and it was a virtual genie for Russians — the combination of Google, Uber, Amazon and Spotify all in one. But the company had an Achilles tendon. It was hidden until the invasion of Ukraine.
Success as a search engine and service provider, like Google and other social media giants, was built on public trust. Before the war, about 50 million Russians visited the home page every day, and the list of the top five headlines was the main source of information for many.
A better understanding of the Russian-Ukraine war
Yandex executives and their users began to embrace the Kremlin’s curation of news sources, which they considered to be a limited part of the vast and groundbreaking tech empire. However, the invasion of public debates about the war and the crackdown on the Kremlin quickly turned Yandex into a joke.
Online, some users have mocked the long-standing slogan “Yandex.” You can find everything “and” Yandex. You can find everything but the truth “or” Yandex. You can find everything but the conscience. “
“Yandex was like Russia’s island of liberty. I don’t know how to continue it,” said Yandex’s five-year CEO’s five-year term when he moved to Israel in April. Professor Elena Bunina said.
Interviews with a former Yandex employee and 10 current employees reveal a portrait of a company stuck between two irreconcilable orders. On the one hand, the Kremlin’s determination to suffocate those who oppose the veil as a “special military operation” in Ukraine must be met. The other is the more secular segment of Western governments, investors, partners, and the Russian audience who are scared of the Russian war.
Ilia Krasilshchik, who resigned from the rapid grocery delivery service Yandex Lavka after being charged with posting a photo of the Bucha massacre by the Russian army, said, “They need to find a way between the two. Yes .. “In other situations, like any other tech company, it will be a perfect company like Google. But because Yandex is a Russian company, there is a problem.”
Founded in 1997 by two math wizards, it has long claimed to generate about 60% of web searches in Russia. (Google has about 35 percent, Dr. Bunina said.)
Prior to Yandex, Russian taxis consisted of random drivers trying to earn a few rubles. Uber tried to enter the market, but eventually forgave it and became a partner of Yandex in Russia and many former Soviet countries. Yandex taxis have expanded to about 20 countries.
Like many successful companies in Russia, especially those involved in all forms of news, Yandex quickly caught the eye of the Kremlin. Putin’s image manager inevitably noticed that news criticizing Putin was frequently featured in the company’s aggregator, Yandex.News. During the 2011 and 2012 street protests and the 2014 attacks on the Crimean Peninsula and eastern Ukraine, the Kremlin authorities sought to compile a list of acceptable news sources.
Yandex tried to push it back by explaining that the algorithm automatically generates lists from thousands of sources based on popularity.
“Since 2014, the pressure on us has increased and we have done everything we can to maintain a neutral role,” said John W. Boynton, an American entrepreneur and chairman of the board. Said in an interview in June. “We are not involved in politics. We never wanted to be involved.”
However, Yandex was too big to get involved in politics, and the Kremlin continued to cut off its independence. New legislation has forced news aggregators and search engines to use officially approved sources, but the government has contested more control over the company’s management structure.
“They just made it easier to pull the string, if they wanted,” said Esther Dyson, one of the two Americans who resigned from the board when the war began. The Kremlin was revealed to be “more on the way to full control,” she said.
After the February 24 invasion, Putin swiftly signed a law criminalizing the dissemination of “fake news” about the military, subject to imprisonment of up to 15 years and heavy fines. The manageable problem of dodging the Kremlin while maintaining an image of independence suddenly became a crisis.
Selling the startup to Yandex for millions of dollars, but for users like tech entrepreneur Tonia Samsonova running it, the impact was jarring. She checked the Yandex headline after reading an online article from a British newspaper that the Kremlin had put the country’s nuclear forces on alert.
There she found a bland story about “deterrence” from state agencies. Surprisingly, she sent a text message to several Yandex executives, suggesting that they present news against the war. She said it pulled the company “no”.
Later, Sam Sonova accused the company of concealing the death of a civilian by the Russian army and posted a handwritten resignation on Instagram.
“It’s not accurate by design, and management knows it,” Sam Sonova said in an interview. “It is a crime to continue it when your country is invading another country.”
The EU quoted a disinformation online accusation by a former chief of Yandex.News in the first sanctions against a top executive.
The company responded to criticism that Russian law had joined hands to disseminate disinformation, saying it wanted to protect the lives of employees and the interests of investors.
Realizing that the government had taken control of another social media giant, VKontakte (equivalent to Facebook), Yandex executives stepped cautiously worried about similar nationalization.
Faced with internal questions, Dr. Bunina can put an independent news on the homepage for about 10 minutes on the weekly company forums shortly after the war began, making no change and putting an end to Yandex. I told the employee that I had sex. He knew it.
Executives believed that as long as they controlled the Yandex search engine, users could find credible news about wars from abroad, saying Russia was not yet China.
But it turned out to be too optimistic. The company soon announced that it would spin off Yandex.News and Yandex.Zen. It’s one of the government’s angry blogging platforms as the primary means of spreading the Kremlin corruption videos that Navalny made on a regular basis.
For now, Yandex executives say their main concern is to continue to innovate while the company’s center is in Russia and separated from most Western technology.
“After the war, we have put all the initiatives to roll out our services globally,” Boynton said.
According to Dr. Bunina, about 2,500 employees who have left Russia remain outside, accelerating the pace of withdrawal from the company.
Yandex is even more annoyed by the growing division between employees staying in Russia and outsiders, making conversations even more difficult and collaboration much less. Insiders are worried about war and discussing the world and refuse to do so, sticking to IT, but those who leave disgust often don’t want to have anything to do with their hometown.
“You can’t understand each other because these are so different worlds now, whether you leave or stay,” Krasilshchik said. “It’s not just Yandex. Yandex is like a miniature country.”
Arina Robzina Report that contributed.
