8 ms·

Microsoft signed a deal in 2015 to set Yandex as the default search engine in several countries close to Russia. The article mentions "Kazakhstan, Turkey, and U

Microsoft signed a deal in 2015 to set Yandex as the default search engine in several countries close to Russia. The article mentions "Kazakhstan, Turkey, and Ukraine". The list is not exhaustive, as I know about Moldova and Georgia. https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-partners-russias-yandex-windows-10 https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-partners-russias-ya... The list includes Ukraine! I've tested Edge with Ukraine as a Region on my MacOS, and it no longer appears to set it to Yandex. But it still does for several other countries. Which includes Moldova. Moldova is a country that Russia has repeatedly threatened. While advanced users may try and remove Yandex as default, non-tech savvy users likely leave the defaults. Meaning Microsoft Edge shares data with Russia by setting Yandex as a default search engine for their users, which is really bad. Please upvote this story to give it visibility. Many thanks!

mabbo 4y ago
Incredibly damning of Microsoft if they were making deals after 2014 to help the Russian aggression against Ukraine. That they would still be participating in this deal is even worse.
- perfect_kiss 4y ago
  Ukraine banned yandex in 2017 for mass data harvesting of Ukrainians, probably that's the main reason why gp did not find it in Ukrainian Bing. It's still possible and perfectly legal to access yandex or other data harvesting engines/disinfo websites over VPN or Tor, so the ban main objective is to protect non-tech-savvy users from the interference of hostile foreign criminals.
  - somethingreen 4y ago
    Not sure why the downvotes, as, yes, Yandex along with several other russian internet service companies is blocked in Ukraine and it is almost certainly why it is not being set as default, because doing so would straight up break search altogether.
- woooooo 4y ago
  [flagged]
- somenameforme 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - watwut 4y ago
    Russia exporting their military into other countries territory does not count as independence.
    - somenameforme 4y ago
      And you begging the question. When Ukraine's government was overthrown in 2014, numerous regions declared their independence. It's so absurdly illogical to try to claim that they can't do this, yet "we" (in that the 2014 insurrection was overtly backed by the US) have every right to overthrow their government. Imagine if the January 6th riots somehow actually did end up driving e.g. Biden out of office. Would states that were aligned with Biden (and opposed to Trump) not thusly have the right to refuse to acknowledge the new government and declare their independence? It seems like a heck of a good reason to me!
      - watwut 4y ago
        That is very manipulative framing and essentially a lie. That Russia did not managed in 2014 to threaten Ukraine away from western direction is what happened. Russia treated Ujrainian president not to sigh EU membership, Ukrainians revolted. Not an USA coup. And prites against specific rejection of democracy bt president. Ukraine did not became Belarus in 2014 due to protests which were against Russian meddling. USA proteats were trying to impose autocracy.
        somenameforme 4y ago
        This [1] is a video of John McCain in the capitol of Ukraine in 2013, shortly before the occasionally violent protests turned into an outright insurrection. He was saying, with minimal sugar coating, "revolt and we'll have your back." Victoria Nuland, currently part of Biden's cabinet, was also there actively agitating protesters. Imagine this in a parallel world in the US. Where the US is a relatively weak, impoverished, and deeply corrupt nation. And the speaker was from ostensibly the most powerful nation in the world. You'd have brought out every anti-government individual in the country, all with that twinkle of violence in their eyes. Which is exactly what happened. I don't really think we would have taken these steps if we felt that the protests would have played out as desired without our meddling, because it ruins even the perception of independence. It was just another in the endless line of long US driven coups. That's not to say the Ukrainian people (particularly of Western Ukraine) were happy. But there's a dramatic difference between dissatisfaction, even to the point of occasionally violent protest, and an actual successful insurrection. I have an immense amount of empathy, and compassion, for the people of Ukraine. But I don't think we're making their lives, or even the lives of their children to come, any better. To say the least. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93eyhO8VTdg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93eyhO8VTdg
- IYasha 4y ago
  what aggression?
  - prometheon1 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Crimea_by_the_Russian_Federation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Crimea_by_the_Ru...
baybal2 4y ago
[dead]
jaynetics 4y ago
Thank goodness edge's market share is very low in these countries. About 2% for Moldova [1]. For MSFT, this is a huge embarrassment, reminiscent of Google's infamous "project dragonfly". And they deleted your inquiry on their forums for "violating the community guidelines"! Not exactly PR geniuses, are they? [1] https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/all/moldova https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/all/moldova
- AdrenalinMd 4y ago
  I wonder how accurate those numbers are about Edge. As 79.48% of desktop users in Moldova are on Windows 10 and Windows 11. [1] Microsoft Edge is the default web browser on Windows 10, Windows 11. [2] Meaning at a huge amount of population will see Yandex when they search for something at least for the first time. Unless they install another browser immediately or change the default search engine. And yes, I wasn't expecting to see my inquiry deleted on their forum. I'm posting again without the screenshot. In case they didn't like what Yandex returns as results (which is weird, as it is their "business partner"). I'm also very humbled by the support of the hacker news community. As a long time lurker, it warms my heart a lot to see so much support. I hope it reaches Microsoft. [1] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/windows/desktop/moldova https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/windows/d... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Edge#Features https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Edge#Features
  - lockhouse 4y ago
    Defaults don't matter as much as we all pretend they do. For the decade that Internet Explorer sucked basically all computer users got programmed to treat it like a Chrome/Firefox downloader. Most users don't know that Edge is Microsoft flavored Chrome now, so they continue to use Edge to download other browsers and move on with their lives. This is an unpopular opinion, but IE4 and especially IE5 were significantly better than what Mozilla/Netscape were putting out at the time. This is what grew their marketshare more than the bundling that everyone focused on. Then Microsoft sat on IE6 for years and let it fall way behind everyone else. IE7 was basically IE6 with tabs. By the time they began investing in their own browser again it was largely too late.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
And once you go to Yandex search page, it will spam you to death to install Yandex browser, which will automatically install Russian government CA certificates, allowing them to spy on all your web traffic!
- dmitrysvd 4y ago
  If I understand correctly, they can only spy on you if they have full access to your traffic, including the ability to modify it, in order to carry out a MITM attack.
  - IYasha 4y ago
    They can only spy on you if you use these certificates e.g. visit government sites.
    - thesmok 4y ago
      You've chosen a wrong place to disinform. Tech people understand that having russian CA certificates installed allows russia to MITM all your traffic, if they can access it.
      - Dandy3556 4y ago
        [dead]
elkos 4y ago
To my understanding, Yandex is nowadays based in the Netherlands.
- ROTMetro 4y ago
  Not after the war. Yandex had it's parent company which was headquartered in the Netherlands removed from operations and instead a new company headed by Aleksei Kudrin, a longtime confidant of President Vladimir Putin was put in charge.
  - ROTMetro 4y ago
    Love the down votes. Sorry about reality guys. You're probably just supporting innocent/aligned in thought Russian programmers: https://ain.capital/2023/01/27/yandex-developers-used-racist-slurs/ https://ain.capital/2023/01/27/yandex-developers-used-racist...
    - Dandy3556 4y ago
      [dead]
- itwillnotbeasy 4y ago
  It's the same thing as company being based on Cayman Islands, it's mostly on paper really. Most of their offices, and human force are located in russia, in 2009 they sold golden share for 1 eur to the russian goverment(which allows to temporarily suspend the head of Yandex among other "benefits"), yeah and CEO(was resigned in dec 2022) and several other people from the board members are sanctioned by the West. > "As founder and CEO of Yandex, he is supporting, materially or financially, the Government of the Russian Federation and is responsible for supporting actions or policies which undermine or threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine," the EU's listing states. > The document also accuses Yandex of "promoting State media and narratives in its search results, and deranking and removing content critical of the Kremlin, such as content related to Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine." from: https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/06/yandex_ceo_arkady_volozh_resigns/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/06/yandex_ceo_arkady_vol... Yeah and they are going to change the formals too - Yandex NV(based in Netherlands) is considering turning the main part of the business into a separate Russian group https://newsunrolled.com/economy/132317.html https://newsunrolled.com/economy/132317.html
smsm42 4y ago
I love it how Russians paid Microsoft to make Russian search engine default in Ukraine, without asking Ukrainians, and nobody in Microsoft thought there's anything wrong with that.
- yakireev 4y ago
  Unitedstatians from Google pay Unitedstatians from Apple to make Google default search engine for all of the world, without asking anyone, do you consider this a problem too?
- Dandy3556 4y ago
  Russian government != Yandex. They did business in Ukraine and worldwide. Don't see the reason why Microsoft or any other enterprise would need to consult the nation as a whole on which business decision to take.
caskstrength 4y ago
> The list includes Ukraine! I've tested Edge with Ukraine as a Region on my MacOS, and it no longer appears to set it to Yandex. Yandex has been banned in Ukraine for some time now, so no point for MS to still have it as default search.

mabbo 4y ago

Incredibly damning of Microsoft if they were making deals after 2014 to help the Russian aggression against Ukraine. That they would still be participating in this deal is even worse.

perfect_kiss 4y ago
Ukraine banned yandex in 2017 for mass data harvesting of Ukrainians, probably that's the main reason why gp did not find it in Ukrainian Bing. It's still possible and perfectly legal to access yandex or other data harvesting engines/disinfo websites over VPN or Tor, so the ban main objective is to protect non-tech-savvy users from the interference of hostile foreign criminals.
- somethingreen 4y ago
  Not sure why the downvotes, as, yes, Yandex along with several other russian internet service companies is blocked in Ukraine and it is almost certainly why it is not being set as default, because doing so would straight up break search altogether.
woooooo 4y ago
[flagged]
somenameforme 4y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- watwut 4y ago
  Russia exporting their military into other countries territory does not count as independence.
  - somenameforme 4y ago
    And you begging the question. When Ukraine's government was overthrown in 2014, numerous regions declared their independence. It's so absurdly illogical to try to claim that they can't do this, yet "we" (in that the 2014 insurrection was overtly backed by the US) have every right to overthrow their government. Imagine if the January 6th riots somehow actually did end up driving e.g. Biden out of office. Would states that were aligned with Biden (and opposed to Trump) not thusly have the right to refuse to acknowledge the new government and declare their independence? It seems like a heck of a good reason to me!
    - watwut 4y ago
      That is very manipulative framing and essentially a lie. That Russia did not managed in 2014 to threaten Ukraine away from western direction is what happened. Russia treated Ujrainian president not to sigh EU membership, Ukrainians revolted. Not an USA coup. And prites against specific rejection of democracy bt president. Ukraine did not became Belarus in 2014 due to protests which were against Russian meddling. USA proteats were trying to impose autocracy.
      - somenameforme 4y ago
        This [1] is a video of John McCain in the capitol of Ukraine in 2013, shortly before the occasionally violent protests turned into an outright insurrection. He was saying, with minimal sugar coating, "revolt and we'll have your back." Victoria Nuland, currently part of Biden's cabinet, was also there actively agitating protesters. Imagine this in a parallel world in the US. Where the US is a relatively weak, impoverished, and deeply corrupt nation. And the speaker was from ostensibly the most powerful nation in the world. You'd have brought out every anti-government individual in the country, all with that twinkle of violence in their eyes. Which is exactly what happened. I don't really think we would have taken these steps if we felt that the protests would have played out as desired without our meddling, because it ruins even the perception of independence. It was just another in the endless line of long US driven coups. That's not to say the Ukrainian people (particularly of Western Ukraine) were happy. But there's a dramatic difference between dissatisfaction, even to the point of occasionally violent protest, and an actual successful insurrection. I have an immense amount of empathy, and compassion, for the people of Ukraine. But I don't think we're making their lives, or even the lives of their children to come, any better. To say the least. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93eyhO8VTdg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93eyhO8VTdg
IYasha 4y ago
what aggression?
- prometheon1 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Crimea_by_the_Russian_Federation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annexation_of_Crimea_by_the_Ru...

baybal2 4y ago

[dead]

jaynetics 4y ago

Thank goodness edge's market share is very low in these countries. About 2% for Moldova [1]. For MSFT, this is a huge embarrassment, reminiscent of Google's infamous "project dragonfly". And they deleted your inquiry on their forums for "violating the community guidelines"! Not exactly PR geniuses, are they? [1] https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/all/moldova https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/all/moldova

AdrenalinMd 4y ago
I wonder how accurate those numbers are about Edge. As 79.48% of desktop users in Moldova are on Windows 10 and Windows 11. [1] Microsoft Edge is the default web browser on Windows 10, Windows 11. [2] Meaning at a huge amount of population will see Yandex when they search for something at least for the first time. Unless they install another browser immediately or change the default search engine. And yes, I wasn't expecting to see my inquiry deleted on their forum. I'm posting again without the screenshot. In case they didn't like what Yandex returns as results (which is weird, as it is their "business partner"). I'm also very humbled by the support of the hacker news community. As a long time lurker, it warms my heart a lot to see so much support. I hope it reaches Microsoft. [1] https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/windows/desktop/moldova https://gs.statcounter.com/os-version-market-share/windows/d... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Edge#Features https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Edge#Features
- lockhouse 4y ago
  Defaults don't matter as much as we all pretend they do. For the decade that Internet Explorer sucked basically all computer users got programmed to treat it like a Chrome/Firefox downloader. Most users don't know that Edge is Microsoft flavored Chrome now, so they continue to use Edge to download other browsers and move on with their lives. This is an unpopular opinion, but IE4 and especially IE5 were significantly better than what Mozilla/Netscape were putting out at the time. This is what grew their marketshare more than the bundling that everyone focused on. Then Microsoft sat on IE6 for years and let it fall way behind everyone else. IE7 was basically IE6 with tabs. By the time they began investing in their own browser again it was largely too late.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago

And once you go to Yandex search page, it will spam you to death to install Yandex browser, which will automatically install Russian government CA certificates, allowing them to spy on all your web traffic!

dmitrysvd 4y ago
If I understand correctly, they can only spy on you if they have full access to your traffic, including the ability to modify it, in order to carry out a MITM attack.
- IYasha 4y ago
  They can only spy on you if you use these certificates e.g. visit government sites.
  - thesmok 4y ago
    You've chosen a wrong place to disinform. Tech people understand that having russian CA certificates installed allows russia to MITM all your traffic, if they can access it.
    - Dandy3556 4y ago
      [dead]

elkos 4y ago

To my understanding, Yandex is nowadays based in the Netherlands.

ROTMetro 4y ago
Not after the war. Yandex had it's parent company which was headquartered in the Netherlands removed from operations and instead a new company headed by Aleksei Kudrin, a longtime confidant of President Vladimir Putin was put in charge.
- ROTMetro 4y ago
  Love the down votes. Sorry about reality guys. You're probably just supporting innocent/aligned in thought Russian programmers: https://ain.capital/2023/01/27/yandex-developers-used-racist-slurs/ https://ain.capital/2023/01/27/yandex-developers-used-racist...
  - Dandy3556 4y ago
    [dead]
itwillnotbeasy 4y ago
It's the same thing as company being based on Cayman Islands, it's mostly on paper really. Most of their offices, and human force are located in russia, in 2009 they sold golden share for 1 eur to the russian goverment(which allows to temporarily suspend the head of Yandex among other "benefits"), yeah and CEO(was resigned in dec 2022) and several other people from the board members are sanctioned by the West. > "As founder and CEO of Yandex, he is supporting, materially or financially, the Government of the Russian Federation and is responsible for supporting actions or policies which undermine or threaten the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine," the EU's listing states. > The document also accuses Yandex of "promoting State media and narratives in its search results, and deranking and removing content critical of the Kremlin, such as content related to Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine." from: https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/06/yandex_ceo_arkady_volozh_resigns/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/06/yandex_ceo_arkady_vol... Yeah and they are going to change the formals too - Yandex NV(based in Netherlands) is considering turning the main part of the business into a separate Russian group https://newsunrolled.com/economy/132317.html https://newsunrolled.com/economy/132317.html

smsm42 4y ago

I love it how Russians paid Microsoft to make Russian search engine default in Ukraine, without asking Ukrainians, and nobody in Microsoft thought there's anything wrong with that.

yakireev 4y ago
Unitedstatians from Google pay Unitedstatians from Apple to make Google default search engine for all of the world, without asking anyone, do you consider this a problem too?
Dandy3556 4y ago
Russian government != Yandex. They did business in Ukraine and worldwide. Don't see the reason why Microsoft or any other enterprise would need to consult the nation as a whole on which business decision to take.

caskstrength 4y ago

> The list includes Ukraine! I've tested Edge with Ukraine as a Region on my MacOS, and it no longer appears to set it to Yandex. Yandex has been banned in Ukraine for some time now, so no point for MS to still have it as default search.