Upstart Russian browser strips down to take on Google

Yandex.Browser puts tabs on the bottom to give as much attention to the Web app or website you're using as possible.Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET

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.

Yandex.Browser places seventh for global PC browser usage -- but only accounts for 0.4 percent of website usage.Data from StatCounter; chart by Stephen Shankland/CNET

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.

Yandex.Browser's iconYandex

"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.Browser offers a choice of search engines when first installed. The choices vary by country.Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET

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.

AdBlock Plus returns to Android so you can surf ad-free

One of the most popular ad-blocking apps is finally back on Android after a two-year hiatus.

AdBlock Plus, the company behind the popular ad-blocking browser extension, released AdBlock Browser Wednesday — a mobile browser for Android that has the company's ad-removing service baked in. The new app comes more than two years after Google removed AdBlock's first Android app from Google Play.

AdBlock Browser isn't available through Google Play yet, but any Android users can get their hands on the beta version by joining this Google+ group and following the download instructions. The company says it hopes to eventually have an iOS version of the app as well.

The browser's default settings block all ads that don't meet specific guidelines for "acceptable ads." The company has a whitelisting process that automatically unblocks ads on certain sites that meet its criteria for being non-intrusive (users can also choose to opt out of all advertisements in the app's settings.)

Instead of building their own browser, AdBlock used a version of Mozilla Firefox so the app's interface looks a lot like other mobile browsers. Writing on the company's blog Wednesday, AdBlock's Felix Dahlke noted that Mozilla's open approach was particularly appealing to the company.

IMAGE: ADBLOCK PLUS

"Building our own browser gives us a lot more freedom to integrate adblocking as a first class feature that’s easy to understand and configure," Dahlke writes. "For now, our goal is to build a solid mobile browser with great adblocking integrated."

The company has other "big plans for the future" though Dahlke says the current one is to keep the experience within Firefox's interface. Whether the app will make it into the Play Store, however, remains to be seen.

The current browser is in Google Play limbo as it waits for approval, which may take awhile given the company's history with Google. The last time AdBlock Plus had an app in Google Play in 2013, it was removed for “interference with another service or product in an unauthorized manner."

But the good news — for now at least — is that the company has figured out a workaround without Google Play.

Tweets Fly Back into Google Search Results After Four Years of Exile

It’s been a long time coming, but tweets are finally viewable on Google (again). The company announced a partnership that’ll see real-time shares from Twitter re-embedded within search results, nearly four years after the end of an earlier agreement forced Google to remove them. Tweets are returning to mobile first — “any browser on your phone or tablet,” Google says — and desktop in the near future. They’re limited to English, for now.

Tweets integrate as you might expect — searching for a specific Twitter account, hashtag, or trending topic (e.g., “NASA Twitter,” “#MadMenFinale,” or “NBA Finals”) yields a scrollable carousel of relevant tweets at the top of search results. The tweets themselves are a little pared down from what you might see on Twitter, but still replete with pertinent media like photos, links, and post timestamps. As far as tweet discovery goes, it seems quite useful.

The integration doesn’t come as a surprise, necessarily — Bloombergreported back in February that Google and Twitter had agreed to a data-sharing deal that’d manifest “in the first half of this year” — but it’s nonetheless a significant reversal for Google. The Mountain View-based company launched the microblogging competitor Buzz in 2011, a service which it was quickly forced to shutter because of low usage numbers and controversy surrounding its opaque privacy controls. For years, Google has featured content from its own social network, Google+, prominently in its search results.

For Twitter, the partnership couldn’t come at a better time. According to Bloomberg, Google’s paying a “data-licensing” fee to access the social network’s firehose of real-time data, a line item which brought in $41 million in revenue last year. That likely won’t placate the investors who sent Twitter stock tumbling 20 percent over the company’s Q1 2015 earnings, but it could help to stem its widening losses as it searches for more profitable means of monetization.

If you can’t see the integration yet, don’t fret — Google says it’s working on bringing tweet integration “to more languages” soon.

Exclusive: Genealogy website Ancestry.com explores sale: sources

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By Liana B. Baker and Greg Roumeliotis

(Reuters) - Ancestry.com LLC, the world's largest family history website helping users trace their heritage, is exploring a sale that could value it at between $2.5 billion and $3 billion, including debt, according to people familiar with the matter.

Permira Advisers LLC, the buyout firm that owns most of privately held Ancestry, has hired investment banks to run an auction for the company, the people said this week.

The sources asked not to be identified because the sale process is confidential. Permira declined to comment, while an Ancestry spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.

Based in Provo, Utah, Ancestry has a database of more than 15 billion historical records and more than 2.1 million paying subscribers. Subscription fees accounted for 83 percent of its total revenue of $619.6 million last year.

In addition to offering genealogical data, Ancestry provides a DNA service that allows customers to discover their genetic ethnicity and find relatives with a common ancestral match.

Permira outbid other private equity firms to take Ancestry private in 2012 for $1.6 billion. Ancestry's subscription revenues have grown to $553.8 million last year from $334.6 million in 2012.

Ancestry's adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization were $214.8 million in 2014, according to its most recent annual report.

Permira, a European private equity firm, manages funds with about 25 billion euros ($27.7 billion) in committed capital.

Well, look at that: Spotify launches video

NEW YORK -- Spotify is changing its tune -- from "listen up" to "look here."

In a move to appeal more broadly to consumers, the Sweden-based music service showed off new features Wednesday including video, podcasts and specialized experiences for people like runners.

During the event, Rochelle King, Spotify's vice president of design and user experience, demoed a carousel of playlists that will be tailored to particular members on a new "Now" start page, including video clips from Vice News, Viacom's Comedy Central and Nerdist News. Spotify's main catalog of songs will be interspersed with these clips as well as podcast spoken-word tracks.

"There were a lot of times when people wanted to use Spotify but had to leave it to come back for five minutes or 10 minutes of entertainment," Chief Executive Daniel Ek said in an interview. "View this step as how we expand music to more places in your life."

Adding video and other types of content could encourage people to spend more time using Spotify and, in the process, generate more advertising revenue. That could help the company keep a tier that's free for you. But it also means that Spotify's format -- a monthly subscription that gives members unlimited access to songs -- will become more complicated for mainstream consumers to understand.

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek says a new update makes the service "more accessible, personal and usable than anything in music."Screenshot by CNET

The move also repositions Spotify before Apple launches its own subscription service based on Beats Music, part of its $3 billion purchase last year of headphone maker Beats. Apple is expected to relaunch the subscription service next month at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference.

Spotify is the biggest service of its kind by listeners, but its rapid growth has been matched by ballooning losses -- 162 million euros last year, or more than $180 million. Part of the reason is most of its users remain on its free, ad-supported tier rather than subscribing for $10 a month, which generates more revenue per user. Digital video could make the ad-supported free service more profitable. Prized by advertisers for how it commands viewers' attention, digital video saw ad spending more than double on mobile devices and jump 38 percent on desktop computers in the US last year, according to researcher eMarketer.

Spotify already has video ads. By including videos people theoretically want to watch, the company can better ensure that people are actually watching the commercials, rather then simply hearing them as the service plays in the background.

However, making Spotify a source for more diverse entertainment risks confusing consumers unfamiliar with the new model of charging a monthly $10 subscription for all the music they want to hear. Spotify identifies its core users as tech savvy early adopters and people who are dogged music fans -- but that leaves a wide swath of mainstream consumers untapped. Will those potential new customers be confused about what they're being asked to pay for if Spotify has comedy clips from Comedy Central shows and news segments from Vice News?

Ek said the new features work toward Spotify's goal of offering a more personalized experience. "Maybe you won't watch the comedy clip, but we will learn that, and we will take it away from you if it's in the way for you," he said.

Apple's entrance into subscription music, which it resisted for years, has the potential to both harm and help rivals like Spotify. Apple will become an intimidating direct competitor, with a globally recognized brand and an established relationship with music buyers worldwide through its years as the primary purveyor of digital downloads through iTunes. Yet one of the most difficult challenges for upstarts like Spotify has been educating mainstream consumers about what a subscription music service is; Apple launching such a product will go a long way toward informing the masses about this model.

Also on Wednesday, Spotify unveiled other new features, including one designed to find soundtracks for people out on a run, based on their gait, as determined by motion sensors in their smartphone.

The new Now experience will begin rolling out Wednesday to iPhone users in the US, UK, Germany and Sweden, with more markets and platforms to follow in the near future. Spotify Running will start rolling out to iPhone users globally Wednesday.