Arkady Volozh

I think Yandex is something in between two different cultures. One originated from the old Soviet culture of the scientific institute. It was a free atmosphere of scientists, maybe too free because nobody cared about making money. Another origin is something close to what you usually see in California startups.

Any good business is a hobby. We have an integrated company culture, and I can honestly say that many people who come here to work make Yandex a central part of their lives.

We never set up Yandex to imitate what others were doing. We've been in the business longer than other search engines and have created many original products.

Russia has to have a technology company of global meaning sooner or later. We should take the depth of technical culture we have here and make it available worldwide.

Yandex originated from a company called Arkadia, which created two search programs under the DOS operating system in 1990.