History of Yandex

Social Projects

As the world was adjusting to life during a pandemic, with medical professionals working around the clock at the front line of the coronavirus crisis, Yandex launched the "Helping Hand" project to support doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers, as well as anyone else in a difficult situation. The project provided free transportation for doctors, food packages, and coronavirus tests. Anyone could contribute to the project by making a donation. Yandex also launched the Self-Isolation Index at the start of the pandemic. The index showed when there were too many people outside and whether it was safe to leave the house.

Delivery Services

Yandex’s delivery services developed exponentially, including due to the customer growth spurred by the lockdown. The company launched “one-click” delivery: delivering customer orders from Yandex.Market first to the Yandex.Lavka dark store, and then to the customer at any time they choose, within 15-20 minutes after clicking the delivery button. Yandex.Taxi added delivery of small packages, while Yandex.Eats started offering delivery via Yandex’s autonomous robot Yandex.Rover in Innopolis and around the White Square business district in Moscow.

YATI

A new leap in search technology and the major improvement over the past ten years. Yandex launched a new approach to text analysis based on transformer neural networks. The new search technology, called YATI, is much more efficient at evaluating semantic relationship between user queries and web content.

Yandex.Market

Yandex.Market, a pioneer comparison shopping engine, joined the Yandex ecosystem again. Following its comeback, the service added marketplace functionality and turned into a comprehensive ecommerce platform where customers can compare prices and buy anything from groceries to household appliances.