Lhe “Russian Google” will become truly Russian and 100% “Putinian”. After months of negotiations, Yandex NV (YNV), Dutch parent company of the search engine of the same name, sells it for 475 billion rubles (4.8 billion euros) to local investors, including fifty directors of the company and the oil group Loukoil. The operation, announced Monday February 5, received the green light from the government, which imposed a 50% discount on the value of the company, since YNV’s headquarters is in the Netherlands, “unfriendly country” in the eyes of the Kremlin.
Since the war in Ukraine, the separation had become inevitable to preserve YNV’s international ambitions while protecting the interests of Moscow, which has very few nuggets like Yandex, listed on Nasdaq in New York. Created in 1997 by Arkady Volozh in response to Google and Yahoo!, the group is one of the rare technological prides of Russia, outclassed by the United States and China in the sector of large digital platforms.
The Russian company will retain the search engine, artificial intelligence, advertising, e-commerce, car sharing, taxis, home delivery and entertainment. Or 95% of turnover, assets and employees. “It was the best possible solution”, admitted its president, John Boynton. The parent company, which should get rid of the cumbersome name of Yandex, will only retain autonomous vehicles, generative AI or cloud computing.
“National Champion”
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov recognized the duration of the discussions, with YNV having to overcome two constraints: excluding buyers under Western sanctions, like a number of oligarchs; and do without the dollar, which led him to carry out the operation half in Chinese yuan (and the other half by exchange of shares). But Mr. Peskov was pleased that this “national champion” continues its activities in Russia.
And under close surveillance. For more than ten years, Vladimir Putin has continued to tighten control of the Internet. In 2022, YNV had to sell media activities to VKontakte, the “Russian Facebook”, which have become more censored every day since the invasion of Ukraine. In his eyes, large platforms allow “monopolistic domination” of the West and “erase Russian culture”. In Russia, authoritarianism and autarky are now the two pillars of the digital space.