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Russia being a 'western' minded country but still not integrated into the US sphere of influence plays the tech game better than China and EU. Facebook and Goog

Russia being a 'western' minded country but still not integrated into the US sphere of influence plays the tech game better than China and EU. Facebook and Google dominate the US-led world but In Russia you see Yandex and Vkontakte/Odnoklassniki dominating the field. You see Yandex Taxi instead of Uber (now merged) and Kaspersky in security context. Putin stressed importance of AI to dominate the future of the world, IMHO, In the upcoming years we'll see more international battles towards AI, Space and robotics. Very interesting times ahead.

aphextron 9y ago
>Facebook and Google dominate the US-led world but In Russia you see Yandex and Vkontakte/Odnoklassniki dominating the field. You see Yandex Taxi instead of Uber (now merged) and Kaspersky in security context. Let's be real though. This is a result of Russia being completely isolated from most major internet services due to the overwhelming amount of malicious traffic originating from there, not any inherent superiority of Russian tech companies.
- diminish 9y ago
  I believe a "different alphabet" causes a delay for majority of the population accessing services from an English-language based services and gives local startups time to excel before the US ones start the worldwide expansion. In latin and other countries within the US sphere of influence, the general population is more inclined since a long time to consume US products even if they aren't localized.
  - Koshkin 9y ago
    Do the Greeks have the same issue?
    - twelve40 9y ago
      No, the Greeks have the issue of having half the population of Moscow, which makes them even more of a niche market.
  - zzzcpan 9y ago
    Actually, Yandex predates Google. But Google still managed to win in russian speaking markets. They couldn't surpass Yandex only in Russia I think. Vkontakte, on the other hand, was a Facebook clone that had time to excel before its worldwide expansion.
    - diminish 9y ago
      Yandex predates Google just like many other search engines predated Google but couldn't give relevant results. But I suspect Google's page rank algorithm was the deal and Yandex at some point improved their search results after Google was the hot kid. Now that LinkedIn is banned in RF (is it still?) there's a chance for moikrug or other local startups to come up. In Moscow I have seen and met (including Yandex) dozens of startup guys copycatting successful US ones. I was always curious why they were more successful than the Berlin ones or other west and east European ones. My conclusion has been the cyrillic alphabet. Of course a country of ~150millions with CIS expansions. I would assume China, Korea, Japan, and some south Asian countries with a different alphabet and a large population offer the same opportunity to to startups. Curious case is India - and I don't remember they having winner tech giants except outsourcing ones.
      - zzzcpan 9y ago
        No, I think Google was catching up to Yandex, because pagerank alone was not enough to give relevant results in russian. Eventually they did and started competing with each other.
    - Sommersonn 9y ago
      >Yandex predates Google. Yandex - founded in 2000. Google - founded in 1998. Predates for sure.
      - kelvich 9y ago
        Yandex as a search engine was publicly opened in 1997 by a company called CompTek. In 2000 they split into a separate legal body.
  - PopsiclePete 9y ago
    For whatever reason, not many people speak English in Russia, especially outside of big cities. They have a completely different view of world affairs and the world situation from you, since the only information they can digest is from their own controlled/manipulated sources and most people have no way to detect any falsehoods - it's not like they could just read Reuters/NY Times. I'm originally from a very small, insignificant country that also uses Cyrillic but people adapted to the early days of the internet just fine. English was relatively widely taught and at least understood on some very basic level, and people adapted the Latin alphabet to type out words, there's even a "phonetic" standard for using the Latin alphabet to write Cyrillic. Most of my friends from that era never even used the (poorly) localized early Windows/DOS, it was all the US version of everything. So Facebook for example is still the thing, and very well localized, although there are (for whatever ungodly reason) "local" versions of sites like YouTube (although YouTube is also super popular).
- chokolad 9y ago
  > Let's be real though. This is a result of Russia being completely isolated from most major internet services due to the overwhelming amount of malicious traffic originating from there, not any inherent superiority of Russian tech companies. Can you please clarify something for me: Are you saying people in Russia can't use Facebook or Google because those companies block them ?
- prostoalex 9y ago
  > Let's be real though. This is a result of Russia being completely isolated from most major internet services due to the overwhelming amount of malicious traffic originating from there, not any inherent superiority of Russian tech companies. Not really, although I'd imagine some companies in defense space or those operating with consumer data might take stringent measures. Russian annual Internet ad spending is just north of $2 billion (136 bln rubles, src https://www.vedomosti.ru/technology/articles/2017/03/21/682043-reklami https://www.vedomosti.ru/technology/articles/2017/03/21/6820..., US digital ad spending, for context, is $77.4 billion) and requires a business and banking entity setup to accept payments from other businesses. They recently started requiring anyone with a business entity to also host their data in Russia, and booted LinkedIn out for not renting data center space locally. Credit cards payments are not widespread, so accepting consumer payments involves going through local transmitters (Qiwi, WebMoney, Yandex.Money) whose total volume is also low. English is not widely spoken, and at the language level Russian is unsuitable for drop-in translations due to flexions and conjugations being expressed by suffixes and occasional stem changes. So overall it's a small ad market with complex payment setup requiring a significant investment just to get started. Most Western companies have Russia "on the list" when they talk about international growth, but it's an afterthought.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
PopsiclePete 9y ago
Russia? Western minded country? When? Where? During the time of Peter the Great, maybe. But now? Absolutely not. There was a brief period of flirtation with Western Liberal ideas in the mid-90's and everything went to shit for them, so Putin put the kibosh on that. Russia has never been a "Western"-minded country, outside of some "elite" circles in St. Petersburg/Moscow. They see themselves as distinct culturally from mainland Europe - they're their own thing. Throughout history, they've always been a separate power with their own interests - always. In many ways like the UK, except the UK is at least part of "Western Civilization". Russia is neither.
- diminish 9y ago
  Most Russians I have met - being critical or bragging about themselves usually come up with the same arguments of how much they are "not western". Actually during my years in Germany, UK and Russia and in most west and east European countries I have seen the same attitude in similar ways. In UK beyond London you'll see the majority referring to Europe as "Europe" and us. Similarly in Turkey, "Europe" is externalized. Russian dynasty after Peter 1., Communist elites, and the last 500 years of Russian history revolves mostly rooting some ideas/technology from "Europe" and exercising this power in Europe and East and South. So I would consider Russia as "western". Especially after I have seen the bigger world of Indians, South asians, South americans, Africans - those cultures are diverse and unique alternatives to the "West" but I would say Russia is not.
- liberte82 9y ago
  Honestly, a lot of people consider Russia western simply because they are white. It's not intentional for the most part, it's subconscious. But the fact that we look alike just makes it so much easier to not consider them foreign.

aphextron 9y ago

>Facebook and Google dominate the US-led world but In Russia you see Yandex and Vkontakte/Odnoklassniki dominating the field. You see Yandex Taxi instead of Uber (now merged) and Kaspersky in security context. Let's be real though. This is a result of Russia being completely isolated from most major internet services due to the overwhelming amount of malicious traffic originating from there, not any inherent superiority of Russian tech companies.

diminish 9y ago
I believe a "different alphabet" causes a delay for majority of the population accessing services from an English-language based services and gives local startups time to excel before the US ones start the worldwide expansion. In latin and other countries within the US sphere of influence, the general population is more inclined since a long time to consume US products even if they aren't localized.
- Koshkin 9y ago
  Do the Greeks have the same issue?
  - twelve40 9y ago
    No, the Greeks have the issue of having half the population of Moscow, which makes them even more of a niche market.
- zzzcpan 9y ago
  Actually, Yandex predates Google. But Google still managed to win in russian speaking markets. They couldn't surpass Yandex only in Russia I think. Vkontakte, on the other hand, was a Facebook clone that had time to excel before its worldwide expansion.
  - diminish 9y ago
    Yandex predates Google just like many other search engines predated Google but couldn't give relevant results. But I suspect Google's page rank algorithm was the deal and Yandex at some point improved their search results after Google was the hot kid. Now that LinkedIn is banned in RF (is it still?) there's a chance for moikrug or other local startups to come up. In Moscow I have seen and met (including Yandex) dozens of startup guys copycatting successful US ones. I was always curious why they were more successful than the Berlin ones or other west and east European ones. My conclusion has been the cyrillic alphabet. Of course a country of ~150millions with CIS expansions. I would assume China, Korea, Japan, and some south Asian countries with a different alphabet and a large population offer the same opportunity to to startups. Curious case is India - and I don't remember they having winner tech giants except outsourcing ones.
    - zzzcpan 9y ago
      No, I think Google was catching up to Yandex, because pagerank alone was not enough to give relevant results in russian. Eventually they did and started competing with each other.
  - Sommersonn 9y ago
    >Yandex predates Google. Yandex - founded in 2000. Google - founded in 1998. Predates for sure.
    - kelvich 9y ago
      Yandex as a search engine was publicly opened in 1997 by a company called CompTek. In 2000 they split into a separate legal body.
- PopsiclePete 9y ago
  For whatever reason, not many people speak English in Russia, especially outside of big cities. They have a completely different view of world affairs and the world situation from you, since the only information they can digest is from their own controlled/manipulated sources and most people have no way to detect any falsehoods - it's not like they could just read Reuters/NY Times. I'm originally from a very small, insignificant country that also uses Cyrillic but people adapted to the early days of the internet just fine. English was relatively widely taught and at least understood on some very basic level, and people adapted the Latin alphabet to type out words, there's even a "phonetic" standard for using the Latin alphabet to write Cyrillic. Most of my friends from that era never even used the (poorly) localized early Windows/DOS, it was all the US version of everything. So Facebook for example is still the thing, and very well localized, although there are (for whatever ungodly reason) "local" versions of sites like YouTube (although YouTube is also super popular).
chokolad 9y ago
> Let's be real though. This is a result of Russia being completely isolated from most major internet services due to the overwhelming amount of malicious traffic originating from there, not any inherent superiority of Russian tech companies. Can you please clarify something for me: Are you saying people in Russia can't use Facebook or Google because those companies block them ?
prostoalex 9y ago
> Let's be real though. This is a result of Russia being completely isolated from most major internet services due to the overwhelming amount of malicious traffic originating from there, not any inherent superiority of Russian tech companies. Not really, although I'd imagine some companies in defense space or those operating with consumer data might take stringent measures. Russian annual Internet ad spending is just north of $2 billion (136 bln rubles, src https://www.vedomosti.ru/technology/articles/2017/03/21/682043-reklami https://www.vedomosti.ru/technology/articles/2017/03/21/6820..., US digital ad spending, for context, is $77.4 billion) and requires a business and banking entity setup to accept payments from other businesses. They recently started requiring anyone with a business entity to also host their data in Russia, and booted LinkedIn out for not renting data center space locally. Credit cards payments are not widespread, so accepting consumer payments involves going through local transmitters (Qiwi, WebMoney, Yandex.Money) whose total volume is also low. English is not widely spoken, and at the language level Russian is unsuitable for drop-in translations due to flexions and conjugations being expressed by suffixes and occasional stem changes. So overall it's a small ad market with complex payment setup requiring a significant investment just to get started. Most Western companies have Russia "on the list" when they talk about international growth, but it's an afterthought.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

PopsiclePete 9y ago

Russia? Western minded country? When? Where? During the time of Peter the Great, maybe. But now? Absolutely not. There was a brief period of flirtation with Western Liberal ideas in the mid-90's and everything went to shit for them, so Putin put the kibosh on that. Russia has never been a "Western"-minded country, outside of some "elite" circles in St. Petersburg/Moscow. They see themselves as distinct culturally from mainland Europe - they're their own thing. Throughout history, they've always been a separate power with their own interests - always. In many ways like the UK, except the UK is at least part of "Western Civilization". Russia is neither.

diminish 9y ago
Most Russians I have met - being critical or bragging about themselves usually come up with the same arguments of how much they are "not western". Actually during my years in Germany, UK and Russia and in most west and east European countries I have seen the same attitude in similar ways. In UK beyond London you'll see the majority referring to Europe as "Europe" and us. Similarly in Turkey, "Europe" is externalized. Russian dynasty after Peter 1., Communist elites, and the last 500 years of Russian history revolves mostly rooting some ideas/technology from "Europe" and exercising this power in Europe and East and South. So I would consider Russia as "western". Especially after I have seen the bigger world of Indians, South asians, South americans, Africans - those cultures are diverse and unique alternatives to the "West" but I would say Russia is not.
liberte82 9y ago
Honestly, a lot of people consider Russia western simply because they are white. It's not intentional for the most part, it's subconscious. But the fact that we look alike just makes it so much easier to not consider them foreign.