Starting this month, Android users in Russia are presented with a choice screen in Chrome Mobile browser allowing them to select their preferred search engine.  Previously, Google search was the default search on Chrome on all Android devices; a different search engine could only be selected by accessing the application settings.  Now, with the most recent version of Chrome Mobile (v.60), users are prompted to select their default search engine when the Chrome app launches.  This is a huge milestone for Russian users and something we have been working towards for a long time.

Today, Yandex released a new version of its search platform, incorporating two important elements:

·      An upgraded version of a deep neural network based search algorithm called “Korolyov,” named after a town northeast of Moscow that has long served as the center of Russia’s space exploration program.

·     Incorporating Yandex.Toloka, a mass-scale crowd-sourced platform for search assessors into  Yandex MatrixNet.