Human Resource Management at Yandex

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- Spamooborona – a server-side spam filtering solution designed for corporate users and Internet service providers. As with Yandex.Mail, the software for servers performs comprehensive analyses of thousands of email properties, measuring their significance and ensuring precise filtering.

- Yandex.Server – a server application for indexing and searching files in various popular formats on web servers, local networks, and database management systems.

- Yandex.Bar – a specialized toolbar for the user’s browser, offering features such as fast and convenient search and access to personalized Yandex services. Yandex.Bar was installed more than 300,000 times per month in the first quarter of 2008.

- Yandex.Desktop Search – a desktop application for indexing and searching files on a personal computer and on local networks, enabling full-text search of various file types, such as Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat as well as the most popular email programs in Russia.

- Ya.Online – an online notification service that alerts a user on his or her desktop when a new message has been delivered to his or her Yandex.Mail account.

Yandex does not produce content; the company merely creates technology for the best possible method of searching and structuring information that already existed. The Yandex.News service, for instance, does not have an editorial board or an opinion column; instead, it offers its users the zeitgeist of the day based on news automatically aggregated from thousands of sources.[16] The Yandex.Market service provides its customers with information on millions of products and services available online without introducing its own notion of what a good or bad purchase is.

Also, Yandex has a number of proprietary data centers interconnected by the company’s own fiber-optic links.[17] The company has developed the Local Network program in order to facilitate fast, low-cost internet access for its users.

The company’s networking equipment is set up in every federal district in Russia. Yandex also has presences at Internet Exchange Points in Frankfurt and Ukraine.

Yandex earns most of its revenue from text-based advertising. Yandex.Direct was the first and largest automated, auction-based system for the placement of text-based advertising in Russia. According to statistical data, it delivers ads to more than ten million users.[18] There are more than 60,000 advertisers on Yandex.Direct.[19] The company places advertising on its own websites, and also participates in delivering text-based ads to the thousands of third-party websites that comprise the Yandex Advertising Network (YAN).

Yandex has always tried to popularize the internet in Russia. In 2001, Yandex launched the Yandex Open Search Cup, which helps to portray the internet as a useful information resource and increases Yandex`s popularity. The idea behind the internet search competition is to get the contestants to compete in finding the answers to set questions on the internet.[20] The competition had to be held between people who had knowledge of the same language (or group of languages) because of the need to set comparable questions. The competition could be held remotely (online, by the means of the internet) or with contestants physically present. Usually, these search competitions, called the Russian Open Internet Search Cup, are organized by Yandex in three stages: the first two are held remotely and the final is in a specific location.

Yandex’s Philosophy

The main point of the company’s mission is to provide answers to users’ questions. As the main activity is providing customers with different services, the company’s core values are closely connected with quality of services and giving the customers appropriate information. This is a list of the main points of the company’s philosophy:

- Services for people. When developing a service, the Yandex team focuses primarily on user characteristics, and only then considers the potential for monetization.

- Mirror of the internet. Yandex structures and aggregates user-relevant content that already exists online or offline and delivers it in the search results without affecting its characteristics or quality.

- Pure hosting. Some of the features offered by the company are designed to give users an opportunity to store their files and share them on Yandex (websites, photographs, and so on). Although users are solely responsible for their content, Yandex reserves the right to determine its policy for hosting user content on its services. Yandex’s user agreement does not allow violation of law and prohibits activities that might damage the online environment (such as spamming or spreading viruses).

- Limited rights for anonymous content. Publicly available user-generated content (UGC) can often be published anonymously, and it might turn out that this content violates the law, infringes a copyright, or commits libel against third parties. In such cases, Yandex is guided by its policy on content published on its pages (i.e. a website on Narod.ru or a video file on Yandex.Video). As soon as the apparently illegal content has been reported, Yandex immediately blocks access to this content (this happens, for example, with instances of child pornography or calls for violence). If content hosted on Yandex’s servers is reported as being of a destructive or offensive nature, but its unlawfulness is not apparent (for instance, content reported as libelous), the owner of this content has two options: either to accept the claim and remove the content, or waive anonymity, that is, provide contact information. If the author does neither of these, Yandex blocks this content.

- Mutually beneficial partnership and non-competition. Yandex does not produce original content, but provides answers to users’ questions using content created by its partners. Yandex aggregates and structures content on the basis of non-competitive partner agreements with the owners of this content. The company’s content-aggregating services are based on mutual advantage: Yandex structures information and creates useful services for users, while partners receive traffic and money. For instance, after gathering a wealth of information on products available online, instead of starting an online shop of its own, Yandex redirects interested customers to partner shops.

Yandex’s main goal is to provide high quality services to customers and to build effective relationships with partners. To ensure that these values are shared by all employees and to maintain a high-performance, creative atmosphere, Yandex has its staff and partners to work as a team. One of the documents that new employees read first when they start with the