Today, Yandex is a leader among Russian search engines. In addition, it is a worthy competitor to such companies on the world stage. Few people know that the story of the creation of Yandex began almost thirty years ago with a diskette on which the future giant was located at that time.
How it all started
It is difficult to imagine that the history of the creation of the Yandex search engine begins in the distant eighties of the last century. It was in 1988 that the author of the project had the idea to create such a program that would take into account the complexity of the Russian language. And a year later such a search engine appeared. The company developing this program was called Arcadia.
Initially, the search algorithms developed in it were focused on patent science. Floppy disks with these programs were successfully sold to various research institutes. However, quickly enough this direction became unclaimed. And the creators of the algorithms decided to make their program larger.
From Fizmat to a Dream Company
Speaking about the history of the creation of Yandex, we should also briefly talk about its authors. The idea of creating an extensive search base belongs to Arkady Yuryevich Volozh. He was born in Kazakhstan and from an early age showed interest in the mathematical sciences. Therefore, he studied in a special school with a physical and mathematical bias, and after that he went to Moscow to enter the physics and mathematics department at Moscow State University. But Volozh failed the exams and graduated from the Gubkin Institute of Oil and Gas. After graduation, he devoted his professional activities to the study of the problems of processing large amounts of information.
And then the era of cooperation began in the country ... Then Volozh, at the direction of his superiors, became the co-founder of the cooperative, which was engaged in a very peculiar barter with Austria: the carriage of seeds was changed to the carriage of personal computers. In parallel, Volozh studied English, the American Robert Stubblebine helped him in this. Together with him, Arkady Yurievich created the company CompTek, which was engaged in the sale of personal computers.
Search & Linguistics
In the history of the creation of Yandex, the company Arcadia has become a kind of training ground for the study and improvement of the search engine. It was founded by Arkady Volozh together with his namesake - Arkady Borkovsky. Borkovsky was engaged in computer linguistics and was one of the best specialists in this field. He worked in the Computing Center of the Academy of Sciences and managed to create a unique program-translator “Gene” at that time. Also to the merits of the linguist is the creation of a spell checking service in the Lexicon. Borkovsky’s knowledge and experience turned out to be indispensable in creating a search program that can adapt to the morphology of the Russian language.
"Search? Some nonsense! ”
In 1990, a new stage began in the history of the creation of the Yandex search engine. Ilya Segalovich came to the Arcadia company. Arkady Volozh knew him since childhood. The fact is that they were sitting at the same desk in the classroom at the school of physical education. After they both tried to enter Moscow State University and both failed exams. Segalovich came to the place of Arkady Borkovsky, who, after the fall of the Iron Curtain, moved to live in America.
It should be noted that Ilya Valentinovich did not believe in what Volozh was doing. He just needed a job. Having learned what Arkady was doing, he called his future work nonsense. At the All-Russian Research Institute of Mineral Resources named after Fedorovsky, where Ilya Valentinovich used to work, he was involved in the development of complex geophysical programs. Therefore, the creation of search algorithms seemed to him unimportant and unpromising. However, he quickly recharged with the enthusiasm and zeal of Volozh.
At first, Ilya Valentinovich was a full-time employee of the Arcadia company, but soon began to be a developer of search algorithms. It was these developments that laid the foundation for the creation of Yandex.
Comptek
In connection with the development of the IT-technologies market, indexing of patents, which Arcadia was engaged in, became unclaimed. Employees continued to develop search programs, but this activity did not generate revenue. Arkady Volozh, being the head of both Arcadia and CompTek, which was engaged in the sale and installation of personal computers and software, did not want to leave data indexing. For this reason, it was decided to make Arcadia one of CompTek’s departments.
An important achievement that aroused interest in relevant circles was the digitization of the Bible. It was a huge work, programmers typed most of the text manually. Thus, a search program focused on the diversity of the Russian language has made itself known. This helped give a boost to development and attracted new customers. It also became an important event in the history of the creation of the Yandex search engine.
First steps
The main developer of Yandex was Ilya Segalovich. Starting to work on a search engine, he faced many difficulties. The response time was very long, and the system for recognizing morphological features was underdeveloped. In improving the program, linguists from the Institute for Information Transmission Problems helped significantly. So began the story of the creation of Yandex.
The second step towards developing a search engine was connecting to the Internet in 1995. This helped determine the direction of activity and set the main tasks in the work on the program. If initially it was focused on the search for information in certain blocks and frameworks, now it was necessary to organize a search on the world wide web.
Within a year, the first version of site indexing was ready. It should be understood in which year Yandex appeared. The official birthday of the search engine is considered September 23, 1997. On this day, Yandex.ru was presented at the Softool exhibition. However, almost a year before this event, CompTek demonstrated the Yandex.Site and Yandex.Dict programs at the Netcom exhibition.
How did Yandex become Yandex?
Ilya Segalovich with Arkady Volozh called their development "Yandex." When this search engine appeared, it was popular among programmers to name their brainchildren using the prefix “yet another” (another one). This technique was used by the authors of the search engine. The full name of the product sounded like “yet another indexer”. The short form is Yandex.
Arkady Volozh suggested replacing the first letters “ya” with the Russian “I”, emphasizing that the program is Russian and is focused on the search for Russian words. In 2008, the company logo changed. At the same time, the name of the product began to be written in Russian.
This story of the creation of the name Yandex is the only true one. In addition to it, there are several more versions. Some associate the name of the program with the Chinese symbol of masculinity (Yandeks).
It should be noted that the search engine today could be called completely different. The program has been put up for sale many times. However, no buyer was found, and Arkady Volozh decided to start the search on his own.
Yandex LLC
In the history of the creation of Yandex, a turning point came in 1997. The search engine announced itself and aroused interest among investors. In the fourth version of Internet Explorer, Yandex was installed as the default search engine. Investments stimulated the development of the program. The search engine could automatically exclude duplicate documents from the results, sort them by relevance. Also, Yandex learned to perform complex verbose queries.
But that was only the beginning. In 1999, Arkady Volozh actively began to engage in promoting the search engine and attracting investment for further development. The difficulty was that Volozh did not want to lose control of Yandex. This undoubtedly affected the desire of investors to invest in the project.
The history of the creation of Yandex begins in 2000. At that time, CompTek did not bring the same income that at first, the company was obsolete. And the search engine, on the contrary, developed and gained popularity. Therefore, Volozh decided to bet on work on the search. Huge investments were received from RuNetHoldings, in exchange the company received about a third of Yandex.
Development
In 2000, Yandex received tremendous development. RuNetHoldings investments have contributed a lot to this. They amounted to more than five million dollars. The staff of the company was significantly expanded, the design was updated, new services were created. Also, a large-scale advertising campaign was organized to promote the company on the market. It was then that the famous slogan appeared: "Yandex - there is everything."
2001 was a key year in the development of the portal. He has become a leader in the search market. When Yandex appeared, several similar sites already existed in Russia. And after a relatively short period of time, Volozh's search engine overtook them all in terms of the number of users and the number of indexed documents. In 2002, the company's audience was more than fifty-four percent of the total number of users.
First profit
Revenues of Yandex should have been higher than expenses by 2004. However, this happened much earlier, in 2002. And in 2003, revenue was approximately two hundred thousand dollars compared to one hundred and fifty thousand spent on development and support. The cost of the company, according to various estimates, ranged from fifteen to thirty million dollars.
In addition, in 2003, Yandex became the first among other Internet companies to start paying dividends. The revenue growth was promoted by the new Yandex.Money service and the appearance of contextual advertising on the portal.
“We work for Leo Tolstoy”
Despite the extent achieved, in 2002 the staff was about twenty people. The company occupied a small office on Vavilova Street in Moscow. There was no clear separation of duties between employees. “Everyone was doing everything,” Yandex employees recall their work at that time. They also note a cozy, almost family-friendly format of work, the atmosphere of which the company carefully preserves today.
By 2006, the company’s staff expanded significantly. The headquarters moved to Samokatnaya street. Also at this time, a remote office was opened in St. Petersburg. In 2010, the company once again changed its location. The new address was a seven-story building on Leo Tolstoy Street. And near the headquarters there was a banner with the ironic inscription "We work for Leo Tolstoy." In 2016, the company bought the building for $ 668 million.
.com
Since 2005, the company began to expand its geographical boundaries. The first appeared Yandex.Ukraine with an office in Odessa. In 2009, yandex.kz appeared, that is, the search engine earned in Kazakhstan. A year later, Belarus followed him, and a year later - Turkey. Today the company also has representative offices in Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and China. Since 2010, the English version of the site began to work: yandex.com.
In the spring of 2011, the company first floated on NASDAQ. On the first day, their prices rose by forty percent, and Yandex's business, initially priced at seven billion dollars, rose in price to eleven and a half billion.
Additions
It is important to understand that at the beginning of its history, Yandex was only a search engine. Its main feature and undoubted advantage was the ability to take into account the rich morphology of the Russian language. But Yandex today is a combination of many technologies, projects and applications.
Among the first in 2000, such services as mail, news, goods, postcards were opened. Yandex.Direct and Yandex.Money became the basis of the company's revenue. In 2004, maps, blogs, and a poster appeared. In 2005, the "Advertising Network" was opened. Next, dictionaries, videos, books, schedules and other useful services were created.
The company also makes a significant contribution to student education. An example of this was the opening of the "School of Data Analysis", where training takes place on a free basis.
Today
Over the twenty-year history of development and formation at Yandex, many important events have occurred. They created the current look of the company. Hundreds of articles have been written about Yandex, dozens of interviews have been taken from search engine managers. The success of the company is so impressive and amazing that they never tire of talking about it.
In 2013, the novel Yandex Volozh: The History of the Creation of a Dream Company was released. This book included all the information (truthful and not so) about Yandex and Arkady Volozh. The dedication is addressed to Ilya Segalovich, who, at the time of the release of the book, unfortunately, died. However, for unknown reasons, the writer ignored Ilya Valentinovich’s contribution to the creation and development of the search engine, and Volozh is represented by the sole author of Yandex.
Perhaps the main thing is that, despite the scale and title of the search leader in Russia, Yandex managed to maintain that initial passion, the desire to develop and move forward, conquering new heights.