"Yandex": the history of the company's creation

2024 Author: Howard Calhoun | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:16

Today, Yandex is the leader among Russian search engines. In addition, it is a worthy competitor of similar companies on the world stage. Few people know that the history of the creation of Yandex began almost thirty years ago with a floppy disk, on which the future giant was placed at that time.

How it all started

It is hard 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 a program that would take into account the complexities 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, this direction quickly became unclaimed. And the creators of the algorithms decided to make their program more ambitious.

From physics and mathematics to dream company

Speaking about the history of the creation of "Yandex", we should briefly talk about its authors. Ideacreation of an extensive search base belongs to Arkady Yurievich Volozh. He was born in Kazakhstan and from early childhood showed an interest in mathematical sciences. Therefore, he studied at a special school with a physics and mathematics bias, and after that he went to Moscow to enter the physics and mathematics at Moscow State University. But Volozh failed the exams and received his higher education at the Gubkin Institute of Oil and Gas. After graduation, he devoted his professional activity to studying 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 a co-founder of a cooperative, which was engaged in a very peculiar barter with Austria: a carload of seeds was exchanged for a carload of personal computers. At the same time, Volozh studied English, helped him in this by the American Robert Stubblebine. Together with him, Arkady Yuryevich created the CompTek company, 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 testing 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 computational linguistics and was one of the best specialists in this field. He worked at the Computing Center of the Academy of Sciences and managed to create a unique at that time translation program "Gene". Also, the linguist's merits include the creation of a service that checks spelling in the Lexicon. Borkovsky's knowledge and experience turned out to beindispensable 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 Yandex search engine. Ilya Segalovich came to the Arcadia company. Arkady Volozh knew him since childhood. The fact is that they sat at the same desk in the classroom at the physics and mathematics school. After they both tried to enter Moscow State University and both failed the exams. Segalovich took the place of Arkady Borkovsky, who moved to live in America after the fall of the Iron Curtain.

It should be noted that Ilya Valentinovich did not believe in what Volozh was doing. He just needed a job. Having learned what Arcadia was doing, he called his future work nonsense. At the All-Russian Research Institute of Mineral Resources named after Fedorovsky, where Ilya Valentinovich had previously worked, he was involved in the development of complex geophysical programs. Therefore, the creation of search algorithms seemed to him an unimportant and unpromising matter. However, he quickly recharged with Volozh's enthusiasm and zeal.

At first, Ilya Valentinovich was a full-time employee of the Arcadia company, but soon he began to appear as developers of search algorithms. It was these developments that marked the beginning of the history of the creation of Yandex.

CompTek

In connection with the development of the IT-technologies market, the indexing of patents, which Arcadia was engaged in, has become unclaimed. Employees continued to develop search programs, but this activity did not bring income. Arkady Volozh, being the head of both Arcadia and CompTek, which was engaged in the sale and installationpersonal computers and software, did not want to leave data indexing. For this reason, it was decided to make Arcadia one of the departments of CompTek.

An important development that aroused interest in the relevant circles was the digitization of the Bible. It was a huge work, programmers typed most of the text by hand. Thus, the search program, focused on the diversity of the Russian language, has declared itself. This helped to give impetus to development and attracted new customers. It also became an important event in the history of the Yandex search engine.

First steps

Ilya Segalovich became the main developer of Yandex. Starting to work on the search engine, he faced many difficulties. The waiting time for a response was very long, and the system for recognizing morphological features was underdeveloped. Linguists from the Institute for Information Transmission Problems helped significantly in improving the program. Thus began the history of the creation of Yandex.

The second step towards the development of the search engine was the connection to the Internet in 1995. This helped to determine the direction of activity and set the main tasks in the work on the program. If initially it was focused on searching for information in certain blocks and frames, now it was necessary to organize a search on the worldwide web.

Already a year later, the first version of site indexing was ready. You should figure out in what year Yandex appeared. Officially the birthday of the search engineconsidered September 23, 1997. On this day, Yandex.ru was presented at the Softool exhibition. However, almost a year before this event at Netcom, CompTek demonstrated Yandex. Site and Yandex. Dict.

How did Yandex become Yandex?

Ilya Segalovich and Arkady Volozh called their development "Yandex". When this search engine appeared, it was popular among programmers to name their offspring using the prefix "yet another" (another one). This technique was also used by the authors of the search engine. The full name of the product sounded like "yet another indexer" (another indexer). Short form - Yandex.

Arkady Volozh suggested replacing the first letters of "ya" with the Russian "ya", emphasizing that the program is Russian and is focused on searching for Russian words. In 2008, the company's logo was changed. At the same time, the product name was 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 masculine symbol (Yandex).

It should be noted that the search engine today could be called completely different. The program has been repeatedly put up for sale. 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, the turning point came in 1997. The search engine declared itself and aroused interest among investors. In the fourth version of Internet Explorer asThe default search engine was set to "Yandex". Investment stimulated the development of the program. The search engine could automatically exclude duplicate documents from the results and sort them by relevance. Yandex also learned how to perform complex multi-word queries.

But that was only the beginning. In 1999, Arkady Volozh actively began to promote the search engine and attract investment for further development. The difficulty was that Volozh did not want to lose control over Yandex. This undoubtedly affected the desire of investors to invest in the project.

The history of the creation of the company "Yandex" begins in 2000. At that time, CompTek was no longer bringing in the same income as at the beginning, the company was becoming obsolete. And the search engine, on the contrary, developed and gained popularity. Therefore, Volozh decided to bet on the work on the search. Huge investments were received from RuNetHoldings, in exchange the company received about a third of Yandex.

Development

In 2000, the company "Yandex" has received tremendous development. This was greatly facilitated by the investments of RuNetHoldings. They amounted to more than five million dollars. The personnel structure 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 became a key year in the development of the portal. It has become a leader in the search market. When appeared"Yandex", several similar sites already existed in Russia. And now, after a relatively short period of time, the Volozh search engine overtook them all in terms of the number of users and the number of indexed documents. In 2002, the company's audience accounted for more than fifty-four percent of the total number of users.

First profit

Yandex Income should have been higher than expenses by 2004. However, this happened much earlier, in 2002. And in 2003, the income was about two hundred thousand dollars against one hundred and fifty thousand spent on development and support. The value of the company, according to various estimates, ranged from fifteen to thirty million dollars.

In addition, in 2003 Yandex was the first among other Internet companies to start paying dividends. Revenue growth was facilitated by the new Yandex. Money service and the appearance of contextual advertising on the portal.

We work for Leo Tolstoy

Despite the achieved scale, in 2002 the staff was about twenty people. The company occupied a small office on Vavilov Street in Moscow. There was no clear division of responsibilities between employees. “Everyone was doing everything,” the employees of Yandex recall about their work at the time. They also note the cozy, almost family-friendly format of work, the atmosphere of which the company carefully preserves today.

By 2006, the staff of the company has 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 Lev Tolstoy Street. And not far from the headquarters, a banner appeared with the ironic inscription "We work for Leo Tolstoy." In 2016, the company purchased the building for $668 million.

.com

Since 2005, the company began to expand its geographical boundaries. The first to appear was Yandex. Ukraine with an office in Odessa. In 2009, yandex.kz appeared, that is, the search engine started working in Kazakhstan. A year later, Belarus followed, and a year later, Turkey. Today the company also has 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 placed its shares on the US stock exchange NASDAQ for the first time. On the very first day, their prices increased by forty percent, and the Yandex business, initially estimated at seven billion dollars, rose 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 income. In 2004, maps, blogs and a poster appeared. ATIn 2005, the "Advertising Network" was opened. Further, dictionaries, videos, books, schedules and other useful services were created.

The company also makes a significant contribution to the education of students. An example of this was the opening of the "School of Data Analysis", where training is provided free of charge.

Today

During the twenty-year history of development and formation in Yandex, many important events have taken place. It was they who created the current image 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 do not get tired of talking about it.

In 2013, the novel “Yandex Volozha: The Story of Creating a Dream Company” was published. This book includes all the information (true and not so) about Yandex and Arkady Volozh. The dedication is addressed to Ilya Segalovich, who, unfortunately, died at the time of the publication of the book. However, for some unknown reason, the writer kept silent about the contribution of Ilya Valentinovich to the creation and development of the search engine, and Volozh is presented as the sole author of Yandex.

The main thing, perhaps, is that, despite the scale and title of the search leader in Russia, Yandex managed to maintain that initial excitement, the desire to develop and move forward, conquering new heights.