• andrew_bidlaw
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      9 months ago

      They dissectes their business in two. Part of it serves local market, part of it serves foreign demand. I’d still avoid them for how many blood they share with a company that:

      1. Excluded everything a bit too oppositional from their searches;
      2. Knowingly program their products as a malware that sometimes installs without admin rights, pays free programs to install them as well, siphon everything they can. Sneaked into a controversial law that requires all smartphones shipped there to have russian-made apps, including a dozen of Ya services;
      3. Has frequent leaks we are already used to. One of the hilarious ones was the leak of Yandex.Eat where OSINT journos who bought the DB from a darknet tracked many siloviks by their ordered delivery to a government institution and to their home.

      Yandex was good in russian language segment when Google wasn’t good at it, and they coded a couple of good products, but they are just that - a local Google, that got reckless with it’s monopoly and suck on government’s tit.

      And some of those who work Yandex international, are the same who did all of that. And I’d be very, very surprised if even westward part of that company doesn’t exchange info with it’s local part and FSB.

      Don’t even trust it.