It feels like a good moment to note that the previous Yandex CEO resigned and moved to Israel, citing that she "can not live in a country that is at war with its neighbours".
You've meant ex-CEO of Yandex Russia, i.e. subsidiary of Yandex N.V.
But yeah, both of them now in Israel, trying to build a new company without Russian money. And it will be problematic because of sanctions now.
It is kinda funny how Israel has not joined sanctions against Russia plus has provided exile for these Russian business people who have been pushed out of Europe and the US.
So She goes to Israel which is in a proxy war with Iran and Syria. The latter it’s already destroyed and the former it’s planning a full scale invasion.
Well, she could have also moved to the US, saying that she cannot live in a country which has no qualms about bombing civilians. There are lots of options these days 8-(
Without getting involved in the RU war politics, Yandex does one thing that most other search engines refuse to do: search for hashes. If you take a hash and put it into Google, Bing, etc. they basically refuse to search for it unless it's a "well known" hash.
Disclosure: I've worked for Yandex as deputy CTO till 2015, and one of the reasons i've left the company was increased pressure from Russian government. Since then I have lived in Ukraine, now in Kyiv.
We're nervously joking about "ID of Good Russian" inside the Russian community. It's like "somebody from Russia who proves he/she is against Putin's regime." At least a third of them are now in Israel, trying to do something to stop this war. Arkady, who was the founder and CEO of Yandex since the beginning for me, is one of these "good Russians." He's helping to run from Russia for many people who's against the war now, trying to build a startup-asylium for russians with jewish roots in Tel-Aviv. I do not believe that Russia as a country will change soon, so one of the best ways to accelerate the process is to help intelligent people to leave the country, as Arkady does.
Honestly, I think everybody at Yandex, including me is guilty because, indirectly, we helped to build this regime. It is not fair to penalty for Volozh this hard. We all have to be penalized somehow, but give us a chance to fix at least something.
> We all have to be penalized somehow, but give us a chance to fix at least something.
I concur with the rest of your argument, but I think excessive penalization should be upheld as long as Russian forces are in Ukraine. The more penalization, the faster that war will end. After war - yeah, some sanctions should be lifted.
It looks like similar problem as with Germany after WW I. They got held down too much "so that they pose threat no more" and it backfired. Western world tried to appease Russia with economic integration and flow of capital, but it still didn't work. Germany somehow departed from their war-oriented path, how would you do that with Russia?
I understand the idea of sanctions but didn't get how it works in this case. He is not in Russia. He lived and pay taxes in Israel for last 3 years. He is even not a Russian citizen (changed his passport to Malta and Israel 4 years ago).
I have nothing to say about sanctions against Tigran Khudaverdyan (who is COO and really in charge of Yandex actually), it's pretty logical.
I always assumed that WWII was facilitated by heavy sanctions imposed on Germany. See [1] for a romanticized description of economic disarray that thrusted Hitler into power.
I wouldn’t feel too guilty. It’s hard to leave friends and family and culture and work and stability behind. I’ve kept my head down and continued to work in the US despite some terrible presidents and plenty of wars and other governmental actions that I completely disagreed with. Do I feel guilty for that? No. I didn’t support it. I didn’t start it. I couldn’t stop it. Leaving would have only destabilized my family and robbed my children of knowing their grandparents.
This isn’t whataboutism. I’m not trying to say Russia is equivalent to the US, etc, etc.
But I think it’s unjust how much guilt and responsibility we put on the shoulders of the average citizen who is just trying to live.
I think the point was exactly that the author of the parent comment is not just an average citizen. As you grow, you tend to (IMHO, rightly) feel more and more responsibility for people around you.
> I do not believe that Russia as a country will change soon, so one of the best ways to accelerate the process is to help intelligent people to leave the country, as Arkady does.
At a personal lever, I feel it's very good and I wish these Russian all the best trying to do something meaningful in exile. On a more global level, though, it's clear that if all anti-war folks leave, the country becomes even more pro-war, and there is nobody left to save it.
That's the difference between us: you're believe in possibility to save the country, I believe that "Carthage must be destroyed" before people can build the new country on top of that. 20 years of dictatorship for Russia, even more for Belarus - it's not something that can be easily fixed.
Not fair. The guy in fact did a great job by NOT letting the Russian government nationalize Yandex (and they considered to do it), so it is up to this day a company with no govt. involvement — which is almost impossible for a business of this scale in Russia.
But yeah, there is a price to it — Yandex had to make a deal that it does not shut down its infamous news aggregator with cherry-picked pro-Kremlin sources (the cherry-picking is required by the Russian regulations in case you didn't know) — despite many ppl in the company wanted to shut it down, as it damages the company's brand so much.
And now since Yandex announced that it has finally managed to get rid of that toxic asset (by selling it) — I don't know for what EU is really punishing him? How that helps ending the war? It has the exact opposite effect. It would be now significantly harder for him to start up new legit businesses outside of Russia, so basically it created complications in moving value out of Russian economy. It looks like a clear win for Russia and a clear loss for the West.
The same, by the way, applies to all Russian people that got "sanctioned" by not giving visas to them, by refusing to open bank accounts, etc. That only keeps brains and money inside of Russia, thus helping the evil regime thrive! Just think about it.
The joke would be funnier if you explained that the same answer was repeatedly given by Yandex when asked why its news service shows only propaganda from a handful of state-controlled sources.
I don't believe that's a fair point. Google takes down requests if the us gov asks them to, or Bing. Baidu can only show Chinese gov approved messages.
They are all at the mercy of the controlling government.
The EU doesn’t hate Russian companies. It is believed that Yandex manipulate their search result in a way to support Putin propaganda. You can read the EU decision if you want to understand their reasoning, it’s all public in their journal of records.
if you don't mind, why should ceo be sanctioned for this? is there a chance for him to do the opposite? it's basically punishment for being a ceo of a russian company.
google does pretty much the same as yandex and baidu. and it was going to do the same trying to go to china.
what eu does can't stop yandex from doing that, so it boils down to just alienating. not for eu's good. the war will end and eu will depend on US even more.
So does youtube... mainstream media from select media houses always comes higher than any independent video producer, no matter the views count or like/dislike ratio.
Well, the EU mandated that search engines manipulate their search results too. So I guess it's indeed that they dislike Yandex/Russia, not that they dislike biased search results.
Why would the world need another Google, European or whatever? I believe we don't need changes to make a new Google possible, we need changes to promote competition of many (much smaller) search engines, service/content aggregators, email services etc.
Readit News
Man the double Standards being exposed recently are amazing.
Dead Comment
I tried three: https://www.google.com/search?q=d8e8fca2dc0f896fd7cb4cb0031b... https://www.google.com/search?q=10b222970537b97919db36ec7573... https://www.google.com/search?q=462b078fb931ee214ff8932226bf...
We're nervously joking about "ID of Good Russian" inside the Russian community. It's like "somebody from Russia who proves he/she is against Putin's regime." At least a third of them are now in Israel, trying to do something to stop this war. Arkady, who was the founder and CEO of Yandex since the beginning for me, is one of these "good Russians." He's helping to run from Russia for many people who's against the war now, trying to build a startup-asylium for russians with jewish roots in Tel-Aviv. I do not believe that Russia as a country will change soon, so one of the best ways to accelerate the process is to help intelligent people to leave the country, as Arkady does.
Honestly, I think everybody at Yandex, including me is guilty because, indirectly, we helped to build this regime. It is not fair to penalty for Volozh this hard. We all have to be penalized somehow, but give us a chance to fix at least something.
I concur with the rest of your argument, but I think excessive penalization should be upheld as long as Russian forces are in Ukraine. The more penalization, the faster that war will end. After war - yeah, some sanctions should be lifted.
It looks like similar problem as with Germany after WW I. They got held down too much "so that they pose threat no more" and it backfired. Western world tried to appease Russia with economic integration and flow of capital, but it still didn't work. Germany somehow departed from their war-oriented path, how would you do that with Russia?
I have nothing to say about sanctions against Tigran Khudaverdyan (who is COO and really in charge of Yandex actually), it's pretty logical.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Comrades_(novel)
This isn’t whataboutism. I’m not trying to say Russia is equivalent to the US, etc, etc.
But I think it’s unjust how much guilt and responsibility we put on the shoulders of the average citizen who is just trying to live.
Sometimes that’s a perfectly rational choice, but when you are knowingly complicit with an abuser, there is always some kind of cosmic price to pay.
It’s not a threat of arbitrary moral punishment, it’s a warning about real long-term consequences.
At a personal lever, I feel it's very good and I wish these Russian all the best trying to do something meaningful in exile. On a more global level, though, it's clear that if all anti-war folks leave, the country becomes even more pro-war, and there is nobody left to save it.
So a new invasion is bad, but an illegal apartheid on going occupation is fine ?
But yeah, there is a price to it — Yandex had to make a deal that it does not shut down its infamous news aggregator with cherry-picked pro-Kremlin sources (the cherry-picking is required by the Russian regulations in case you didn't know) — despite many ppl in the company wanted to shut it down, as it damages the company's brand so much.
And now since Yandex announced that it has finally managed to get rid of that toxic asset (by selling it) — I don't know for what EU is really punishing him? How that helps ending the war? It has the exact opposite effect. It would be now significantly harder for him to start up new legit businesses outside of Russia, so basically it created complications in moving value out of Russian economy. It looks like a clear win for Russia and a clear loss for the West.
The same, by the way, applies to all Russian people that got "sanctioned" by not giving visas to them, by refusing to open bank accounts, etc. That only keeps brains and money inside of Russia, thus helping the evil regime thrive! Just think about it.
- In fact, we did not, it was made purely algorithmically.
(funny joke)
They are all at the mercy of the controlling government.
A: None. He just slipped.
Dead Comment
Deleted Comment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigran_Khudaverdyan
> Yandex itself is not subject to EU sanctions.
Only this particular individual has been targeted for his support for the Russian invasion against Ukraine.