Microsoft and Yandex, the NASDAQ-listed Russian search giant, announced today a strategic cooperation agreement to allow users in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Turkey and several other countries in the region to upgrade to a custom experience with Windows 10.
In these countries, Yandex will be offered as the default homepage and search for the Microsoft Edge browser as well as IE across Windows 10 devices.
According to the agreement, Microsoft will deliver custom experience with local browsing and search capabilities through the Yandex search engine across Windows 10 devices distributed in the region.
In addition, people in these regions will be introduced to the advantages of Windows 10 through the Yandex index page, which will offer them a place to download and install the official Windows 10 experience. The Yandex feature page will also showcase the capabilities of Windows 10, and offer people a seamless way to obtain it.
The Russian search company will also deliver Universal Windows Applications for search, navigator, music, taxi, market and maps.
“Microsoft and Yandex have a long-standing, successful partnership with Yandex search currently integrated in Windows Phone locally, and we look forward to introducing Yandex search to our customers across the Windows 10 ecosystem in these markets,” stated Terry Myerson, executive vice president, Windows and Devices at Microsoft in a press release.
Under pressure from Google
Last month Microsoft said it had partnered with Chinese tech giant Baidu to boost the adoption of Windows 10 in China in a deal that saw Microsoft for the first time dump its own search engine Bing as the default search tool, as reported by Reuters.
“The fact that Bing can be replaced on Windows 10 by something else, is a big deal, it’s never happened before,” stated Yandex founder and CEO Arkady Volozh, commenting the move in an interview with Reuters earlier this month.
“Microsoft is merging its desktop and mobile platforms and together it will have quite a significant (market) share, 20-30 percent,” Volozh added in the interview.
Still leading the search markets in Russia and several Russian-speaking countries, Yandex has been under pressure from Google over the past years. The Russian company’s market share tends to decrease due to the popularity of smartphones based on Android in Russia.
