Russians dent Google’s world domination
business.timesonline.co.uk
business.timesonline.co.uk
Edit: in addition to ex-USSR TLDs they also index web sites that map to IPs physically located in ex-USSR, regardless of the domain.
Anyway IMHO Google gives better search results in Russian. I guess they have more users here for the same reasons Yahoo does better in Japan. It's all about culture.
They were clever enough to index en.wikipedia.org, although it is usually not at the top for some very obvious requests (e.g. try "Turing Machine"), which is an indication of a rather poor ranking system.
My impression is, Yandex does not compete with Google in any way. Despite its slogan ("Everything can be found" or something like that) it's just a limited web index that doesn't even state explicitly about its limitations. And that's strange at least.
Edit: NB: they have a minimalist front-end at ya.ru
Yandex is mainstream, it's not a geeky site, and most Russians don't speak English well enough to prefer originals to translations. So most of its users just don't arrive at the limits of Yandex's index ever.
Of course it's nice for me to be able to go to google.com and search in Russian or in English or in any other language (and get results in the language I search), but it's just not what the majority of Russians needs or wants.
Their policy on the search index was 'only russian-language content' (their bot analyzes page text rather than looks at the TLDs or IPs), then a couple of years ago they started including more and more sites in english, starting from encyclopedias etc. This is possibly also because their indexing technology was deep into morphology of Russian language from the very start in late 1990-s.
PS their slogan is a bit more dramatic - 'Everything WILL be found' :)
And no, they confirmed, it wasn't because my web site was marked as spam. They explained to me that "some" servers have to be included manually because they are beyond their "default" space.
What puzzles me is that Yandex is definitely not the entire Internet, not even the entire Russian-speaking internet, and yet it claims to be finding "Everything" without mentioning of the limitations in place. My point is, this is misleading for the users, if not just plain cheating.
Soemthing is definitely wrong with their policies with regard to indexing the Web.
Not long ago I submitted .com English/Russian/German site to them and they refused to index anything but Russian part, but Russian part was index successfully (although the sever is in Russia).
Yandex explicitly state its limitations at http://company.yandex.com/
Being No.1 Russian-language search engine they do compete with Google in local market (few years ago Google wasn't even an option for Russian-language search).
And its slogan is Russian-only ("найдётся всё") - only for Russian speakers.
There can be no doubt that Russia has many, many brilliant mathematicians and engineers (poets, writers and musicians too). Everyone knows this. And, individually, I know their people can be quite lovely. The problem is that these people are in Russia. Russia crushes all. How many times do people have to get burned by Russia to realize Russia is a trade - not an investment? How long before the wannabe czar declares "all your routers/servers/data/money/life are belong to us"? "Russians", by and large, are not affluent. A relative handful of Moscowvites are.
Mark Franchetti is obviously on the payroll but why he would write this blatant puff piece about "yet another indexer" is beyond me. These people have nothing Google, Yahoo and even Microsoft can and have put together. The only thing they do have is an advantage in the understanding of native Russian language and society. Ok, so? There is no market for Russian services outside of Russia. The rest of the world speaks English, French, Spanish, Arabic or some version of Chinese with a smattering of Portuguese thrown in for good measure.
Since the Empire struck back in Georgia, international monetary outflows from Russia have been at their highest levels since the Great Ruble Implosion of the late 1990's. Lets face it gang, when the big ugly bear flexes its muscles people run for cover. Nobody wants to be in bed with his highness, the dread nightmare Putin. Who here thinks Putin has his peoples best interest at heart? Who here thinks a goal of Russia is to increase the prosperity of its people? Putin is out for numero uno, Putin. And the main concern for Putin is Gazprom. Who here thinks that Yandex will continue to fly under the radar of the FSB indefinitely? Who here thinks an independent, privately owned and operated company can exist in Russia without connections to their political/military/underworld/secret police?
(off topic) People in the West love to bitch and moan about the US all day long. 'Hegemony', 'Imperialism', 'Totalitarianism' and, lest we forget, torture. Has everyone fallen asleep at the wheel? If you are from the West and do not have an ancestral connection to mother Russia, you have no idea what any of those words mean. It will be many generations (hopefully that short) before Russia is friendly enough as a national entity to do anything even related to business with.
In closing, if this Yandex knows whats good for them they will pull up stakes, run dont walk and leave Russia with extreme haste and plop themselves down anywhere else. London, Paris, Silicon Valley, New York, Madrid. Pick one, any of a dozen or more cities would be better than the dump that we know today as Russia.
Oh, in the fairness of full disclosure, if it sounds like I am anti-Russia in the extreme, I am. Honestly, which Olympic medalist of any color has defected from the West to Russia? We here in America have Russia to thank for our brand new Olympic individual gymnastic all-around Champion, Nastia Luikin :)
/end rant
For people who want to understand Russia, I suggest learning more about the 90s, and what was actually happening there while The Economist and the rest of them were falling over themselves with praise. It will put into perspective what they're saying now. Here's a teaser:
http://media.hoover.org/images/graph2.GIF
If nothing else, it will remove the desire to pontificate on "the big ugly bear" and "the dread nightmare Putin".
Russia is a great country. It deserves better than Putin and a continuation of oligarchy.
I'd ask you what actions you're talking about, but this isn't the place for that.
+1
After my experience with Russia and Western media's version of Russia, I had been wondering how to get reliable information on nations whose cultures are isolated from the Western culture (in particular, China). I haven't come up with anything yet, so now I pretty much ignore what comes from the media, and try not to form opinions.
it's pretty interesting, actually. For example, Putin is often quoted with saying that the Collapse of the Soviet Union was the "biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the (last) century." Without context, that sounds like strange, if not downright dangerous thinking to western ears. But it also can help our understanding how the collapse and the chaotic 90s were perceived by the Russians themselves:
TIME: Were the 1990s a time of paradox for you?
On the one hand, you say it gave you the Gorbachev
freedoms; on the other hand, in your statements you
have stated that there was a period of total collapse
and the tragedy of the destruction of the Soviet Union.
PUTIN: I don't see a paradox here. The administrative
planning system that prevailed in economic life, and the
complete domination of the Communist Party in the
political area, resulted in a collapse of the country.
When people no longer cared about the state they lived in,
they didn't need such a state, therefore there was no
surprise that the people couldn't care less about that
state. They believed that things couldn't get any worse,
but it turned out that they could, and did. The tragedy is
that people were utterly dissatisfied and disillusioned
because the free-for-all was declared as democracy, the
theft of billions of dollars was described as the free
market and the theft of enormous assets belonging to the
people were declared privatization. What did the collapse
of the Soviet Union mean? Twenty-five million Soviet
citizens who were ethnic Russians found themselves beyond
the borders of new Russia. Nobody gave thought to them.
Twenty-five million would make up a major European nation.
Before taking a decision, one should consult the
population. Do you want to live separate from the state
you live in now? I'm confident that if we were to hold a
referendum in many of the former Soviet republics, the
vast majority would say no. But nobody asked them. Was
that a democratic solution? Of such a difficult problem?
Well, we're not trying to revisit this but that was so.
Who asked us or them? Twenty-five million Russians found
themselves outside the Russian Federation, without any
economic means, amid growing local nationalism. When they
couldn't possibly come to the new Russia, to their
historical motherland, because they didn't even have money
to buy a train or a plane ticket. Is it not a tragedy?http://www.google.com/search?q=russian+life+expectancy+chart