According to the latest report, Russian search giant Yandex will use yandex.ru as the main home page for Russian users to switch to ya.ru, although the domain name dates back to 2000, it has historically only hosted A basic search engine page.
Like Google’s decision to de-emphasize google.com in favor of less popular domains, Yandex’s approach will bring about a major shift in the Russian internet landscape.
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The shift comes in conjunction with Yandex’s recent announcement to sell its flagship media product, news aggregator News and blog recommendation platform Zen, in connection with the Russia-Ukraine war. The war has led to increased censorship within Russia, making media ownership more politically risky than ever.
Yandex’s business has not yet been sanctioned by the West, but two of its executives, hit by EU sanctions in recent months, continued to operate in Russia while taking risks after a critical analysis of its platform. Now, there is a cleverly redesigned version of ya.ru that adds weather icons and buttons that point visitors to other Yandex services.
For decades, Yandex has owned the ya.ru search engine page and the richer yandex.ru portal, but the former has remained largely untouched, the latter integrating Yandex’s media offerings.
The updated ya.ru page now displays the “Search” term (although it is grayed out, meaning it is barely visible), above the search bar. It’s a far cry from the information-intensive look of yandex.ru, where content from news aggregators grabs users’ attention with a bottomless scrolling feed.
A Yandex spokesperson confirmed that ya.ru received the update, saying this is the first time the page has been updated in 22 years, and more changes are coming. “We plan to redesign the ya.ru page and release a new mobile application. The focus will be on search and Yandex virtual assistant Alice. We will share details later.”
