Why Yandex loses market share?

Why Yandex loses market share 

This article also appeared on SearchCowboys

Yandex, the leading Russian search engine, has been losing market share for some time now. According to Liveinternet.ru, over the last year Yandex's market share in Russia dropped 4.8%, while Google went 4% up. Although still the absolute leader with 59,7% of the market today, Yandex is slowly losing dedicated users, while Google (25.1%) is growing. So why is this happening?

Yandex started to give in to Google mainly due to the growing popularity of Chrome, now the most widely used web browser in Russia (see stats by StatCounter).

Obviously, Google Chrome was created with Google as a default search engine which, at least for Russian users, could not be changed.  Not to stay behind, Yandex made its own Chrome browser based on Chromium open-source code. Essentially the Russian Chrome (Хром in Cyrillic) is identical to Google Chrome - with the exception of the default homepage being of course Yandex.ru, the default search engine being Yandex, and the bookmarks being filled with a number of Yandex services.

However, Yandex hasn't regained its strength yet. Some Russian bloggers simply say this is due to the fact that Google is a superior search engine and back their words with a strong statement that reads "Yandex sucks: progressive people use Google!". In my next article I will compare what features Yandex and Google actually have to offer their users - let's see who wins the epic fight!

• Door Tamara Yadvichuk
• Gepost op 8 Feb, 2012