History of Yandex

Break-even point

Yandex became profitable. An event that had been expected to happen in the following year, it came early, in August 2002 — largely thanks to the growth in contextual advertising. Advertisers could see that internet advertising worked.

Services

Yandex.Images and Yandex.Market opened. At launch, Yandex.Images had 12 million pictures, while products from almost 150 internet stores were offered on Yandex.Market — books, films, cosmetics, footwear, clothing, stationery and toys. In the same year, Yandex and the PayCash group of companies together launched the payment system Yandex.Money.

Meanwhile

The volume of the Runet grew to a terabyte. That may not be huge, but it’s not that small either: about the size of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. At that time, 8% of Russians were using the internet — 8.8 million people. The daily number of search queries on Yandex passed the 2 million mark.