Yandex released a beta version of its streamlined Yandex.Browser Thursday, a Web browser designed to strip the clutter out of using the Web and help the Russian company stand up to Google.
The company first released a browser in 2012, but in 2014 unveiled a concept with a dramatically different, pared-back interface. This system is designed to put almost all the focus on websites and as little as possible on browser controls like buttons and search bars. For example, tabs that house individual websites are moved down to the bottom of the page, reflecting their subordinate status.
Browser technology languished for the better part of a decade after Microsoft's Internet Explorer won the first browser wars at the end of the 1990s. But browsers have become strategic tools for some of tech's biggest companies -- Yandex now among them -- triggering an explosion of competition that has made the Web vastly more useful to the average person. Better performance and new features mean the Web is becoming much more sophisticated as a publishing medium, even as it expands into a foundation for interactive applications too.The beta release signals that Yandex is ready for a wider audience to test the browser -- it's available now for Microsoft's Windows and Apple's OS X and is coming later for phones andtablets. Additionally, it shows that the company is committed to its browser project, despite the fact that the vast majority of the browser market power is concentrated in the hands of Google, Microsoft, Apple and Mozilla.
Firefox steered browsers away from Microsoft's in-house Web technology toward newer, standardized features any browser could use. Apple breathed life into mobile browsers. Chrome pushed browser speeds ahead. All this led Microsoft to throw away old Internet Explorer baggage and start fresh with the modernized, faster-moving, fuller-featured new Edge browser that's due later this year with Windows 10.
Concentrated power
So far though, the browser world's power is concentrated in Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer. But Yandex has some reason to believe in its project.
In Russia, Yandex is something of a mini-Google, operating a panoply of online services, and it's held its own competing against the larger US company. Its online search site has 40 percent share of usage compared to Google's 51 percent, according to April measurements from analytics firm StatCounter. Yandex also offers services for email, maps, cloud-based document storage, online translation and more.
Search ads can provide a major revenue source. These are the ads derived from online search terms and placed alongside search results. But Google's increasingly influential Chrome browser was hurting Yandex's search business, Yandex spokesman Vladimir Isaev has explained.
"Securing search share was one of reasons we had to launch our own browser," he said, describing that it had become harder for third parties to integrate their search services into Chrome and more difficult for people to select them. "We would be in trouble on desktops [without] launching our own browser."
Search revenue key
Search ads represent about 97 percent of Yandex's revenue. In the first quarter of 2015, that was 12.3 billion rubles ($211.1 million). The company's profit for that quarter was 2.1 billion ($36.4 million). Yandex isn't the size of companies like Google and Microsoft, but it is large, with 5,603 employees at the end of March.
Worldwide, Yandex.Browser has attained a creditable seventh-place finish in the browser market, but that's only 0.4 percent of PC browser usage, according to StatCounter. In Russia though it fares better, with fifth place and 10 percent share of PC browser usage.
"The browser market is very liquid and fast-changing," Isaev said. "You remember how long IE dominance continued on the market. Then Chrome began to grow, and now it is a leader."
Most people using Yandex services are in Russia, Turkey and Ukraine. In those markets, Yandex has more than 100 million monthly users, and Yandex services are integrated with the browser. "Yandex.Browser is a natural gateway to Yandex services for them," Isaev said. By contrast, the new Yandex.Browser offers users a choice of search engines when they first install the software (specifics vary by country).
Companies that have their own browser have another financial advantage: they don't have to share revenue with other companies that refer traffic to their search engine. That's one reason Google has called Chrome so successful. In 2013, Google paid Mozilla $314 million for the people who used Firefox to search with Google.
Meet Yandex's browser
Although Yandex.Browser challenges Google, it also relies on it. Google's Chrome browser is based on the open-source Chromium browser project, using elements like the Blink engine to turn website programming instructions into the pictures and text you see on the screen. Open-source software can be freely used and modified by anyone, and that's what Yandex is doing for the basis of its browser. Chromium is mostly the same as Chrome, but the latter has some proprietary elements mixed in that can't be shared freely. This includes support for video that's been compressed with the patent-protected H.264 technology.
Yandex also contributes some work back to the Chromium open-source project -- for example, byexpanding some new networking features.
Piggybacking on Chromium is important: the table stakes for offering a browser are high, and using Google's software means companies don't have to spend lots of money paying programmers to reinvent the wheel. That's why another browser maker, Opera Software, switched from its own browser foundation to Chrome, and it's why Google based Chrome on Apple's open-source WebKit project, and why Apple based its WebKit project on another open-source browser called KHTML.
Using Chromium also means Yandex.Browser isn't a burden for developers who already have plenty of problems making sure their websites work properly on multiple browsers.
Yandex offers differences, though, besides the interface. For instance, it has its own safe browsing service to try to keep people from visiting sites infected with harmful software. It's also got a turbo mode licensed from Opera that can compress text, images and video for better performance on slow networks.
Stealth mode
Yandex.Browser also has a "stealth mode" option developed by AdGuard, easily enabled by clicking an icon of a stealth fighter jet in the upper-right corner of the screen. It blocks website analytics tools and other technology that can be used to track user behavior.
Privacy was a concern the during international expansion of Yandex.Browser, which is available in 15 languages. One change from the prototype version of the browser is that in countries including the US and Germany, the browser doesn't share anonymous usage data with Yandex unless the user specifically enables it.
The browser includes Adobe Systems' Flash Player plugin -- a technology that's fading from modern websites but is still widely used for things like streaming video and games. For viewing PDF (Portable Document Format) files, Yandex includes the PDFium software from Google.
Yandex.Browser can also use extensions to get new abilities. Saving articles with Pocket to read later, synchronizing passwords with LastPass and storing notes with Evernote are all available options. A Yandex.Browser extensions site, operated by Opera Software, lists more than 600 extensions, but the software will also run add-ons from Google's Chrome Web Store, Isaev said.
Yandex.Browser is a balancing act between the company's own software and technology from others. Its international ambitions are limited, but closer to home, Yandex thinks it'll keep its edge.
"We think we can compete in this market," Isaev said.
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