According to foreign media TechCrunch, Russian search giant Yandex will use ya.ru as the main homepage for Russian users, replacing the previous yandex.ru. To give an inappropriate example, it’s a bit like Google’s decision to switch from google.com to another less popular domain name. As Russia’s long-term search hegemon, Yandex’s approach will bring about a major change in the Russian Internet landscape.
It is understood that Yandex’s move is to avoid operational risks. Although Yandex’s business has not yet been sanctioned by the West, two Yandex executives have been suppressed by the European Union in recent months. In order to eliminate some of the risks of operating in Russia, and after analyzing its own platform, Yandex decided to redirect traffic in Russia from yandex.ru to the ya.ru domain.
The ya.ru domain name is not new, it dates back to 2000, but Yandex only used it to host a basic Russian search engine home page. For more than two decades, Yandex has had the ya.ru search engine page, which has remained unchanged, and the richer yandex.ru portal, which has gradually integrated Yandex’s media offerings.
Currently, the redesigned version of ya.ru has been updated, and what you can see is that the page mainly adds weather icons and buttons that direct visitors to other Yandex media services.
Source: ya.ru screenshot
Also, as shown in the image above, the updated ya.ru homepage has the word “Search” in grey above the search bar. After foreign media contacted the official, a Yandex spokesperson confirmed in a response that this was the first update of the page in 22 years.
The spokesperson also said that Yandex will soon bring more changes to the ya.ru homepage: “We plan to redesign the page and release a new mobile app. The focus will be on search and Yandex virtual assistant Alice. We will share more details in the future.”
Regarding Yandex’s recent shift in focus, its spokesman did not reveal more information, and outside speculation may be a return to the roots of technology itself. At the same time, this shift is also related to Yandex’s recent announcement of the sale of its flagship media product, news aggregator News and blog recommendation platform Zen (in April, Yandex sold News and Zen to local social media giant VK) and the Russian-Ukrainian war. The war has strengthened censorship within Russia and made media ownership more risky than ever.
Reference link:
https://techcrunch.com/2022/06/17/yandex-ya-ru/
The text and pictures in this article are from InfoQ
This article is reprinted from https://www.techug.com/post/to-avoid-operational-risks-yandex-a-russian-search-giant-changed-its-domain-name-and-shifted-its-focus/
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