The Ukrainian representative office of the Russian company "Yandex" has opened the portal yandex.ua. This was announced by company representatives at a press conference.
The website www.yandex.ua presents the portal's services aimed at residents of Ukraine.
First of all, these are searches across Ukrainian sites and Ukrainian news, as well as information on hryvnia exchange rate changes, TV programming (15 Ukrainian channels), and weather in various regions of the country (more than 30 cities).
According to Yandex CEO Arkady Volozh, the company has also begun implementing Ukrainian morphology in the portal's search.
According to Serhiy Petrenko, director of the Ukrainian representative office "Yandex.Ukraine," the company expects the representative office's turnover in 2006 to be $1-1.5 million.
He also noted that one of the company's tasks is the development of the online advertising market, primarily search advertising.
According to Yandex data, about 0.5 million residents of Ukraine use this search engine every week.
In March, the "Yandex" trademark was registered in Ukraine.
"Yandex" owns the domains yandex.ua and yandex.com.ua.
By 2005, Yandex's daily audience, including foreign users, exceeded 2.5 million people, and its monthly audience exceeded 16 million.
In 2004, the company received a net profit of $7 million.
yandex.ru is the leader among search engines from which transitions to Ukrainian sites are made; in August, transitions from this search engine amounted to 33.1%.