Facebook and Google may be the unprecedented giants all across the world, but as luck would have it, not all markets are the same. Take Russia for example, where local companies like Yandex and VK continue to show who’s the real Goliath.
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Yandex is a search company similar to Google, and is currently the most popular search engine in Russia. Yandex currently holds 61 percent market share in search as compared to just 26 percent by Google.
Yandex also has its own web browser called Yandex.Browser, a browser built on the open-source foundations of Chromium, the same underpinnings of Google’s own Chrome browser. Oops, I guess Google did not see this coming. What’s unique about Yandex.Browser though, is that it integrates Yandex search, weather, traffic, and other services, and security software from security powerhouse Kaspersky Lab.
As for Facebook, their Russian competitor VK has about 34 million users compared to Facebook’s 9 million users in Russia. This explains why Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was recently seen visiting Russia and meeting Russian Prime Minister, Dmitri Medvedev.
Google and Facebook face same challenges in a populous countries like China, where a combination of government policies, red tape and well-entrenched local competitors, make it an uphill battle for the global internet giants to gain a stranglehold in these key markets.
Russia, like China, is an important market as it has more internet users than any other country in Europe.
Good luck, I guess?
Source: WIRED, newser, Businessweek
Image: Moses
