<ironic>
Finally Europe has a European Google!
</ironic>
Europe stretch to the Urals.
Yandex was there for many years now. Its just that now this is "european" Yandex and in Russia there is a "Moscow Yandex".
Also - search tech will remain in Moscow. EU Yandex is mainly about cloud solutions, self-driving cars etc.
Probably just to avoid paying taxes (the famous "dutch sandwich" trick)
I personally think it does matter, I use it often to find things that I can't find on Google. I was actually just thinking today how many thing I've been able to find using Yandex that I couldn't find using Google and that in some ways, I almost prefer it as a search engine lately.