Comment by the-lazy-guy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by the-lazy-guy | Hacker News Reader

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1. Do you have examples when the "golden share" rights were excercised? Or which company decisions were actually impacted by it? "veto right" != "control". Othrwise we could say that Russia controls UN security council. All that golden share can veto is the consolidation of ownership in one hands.

2. I read it differently. The screws are tightened and company will be under control of board if Volozh dies, 2 of 12 board members are government-appointed. So I agree that government is trying to control Yandex tightly. It hasn't happened yet.

3. As far as I can see - Yandex does not support the war. And no russian commercial company can be openly against the war without effectively stopping the opperations immediately. Living under insane dictator is hard, but I don't think it is reponsible behaviour to turn shareholders investments into nil, leaving 20k people without job and millions of people without services (the last part is the least important because there are other local substitutes for most Yandex services). Genuine western companies can be openly against the war, because neither sufficient part of their income comes from Russia, nor most of their production/workforce is in Russia.

About your small things:

1. What kind of news can be aggregated from other sources is regulated by law. I mentioned that in my firs comment. There are _no_ non-pro-government news sources left in Russia. The ones that were still operating a short while ago regularly recieved strikes from regulators. You could make a point that it would have been better if Yandex just closed its news service entirely; and I would agree with you. I bet Yandex is thinking the same right now, but it is hard to make this decision when things were slowly regressing for 10 years and the tipping point was reached and news became toxic.

2. Right, because making statements to Putin makes such a great difference?

P.S. It is quite clear that in the recent years Yandex was trying to migrate from Russia as soon as possible to be less dependent on the whims of the regime. They did find the niches where they could be successful outside of Russia (at the very least - delivery, taxi and ride-heiling, cloud) but didn't have time to execute the plan.

1. I'm not part of board and I have no way to find you examples like that. Veto is exactly form of control, UN is under 'veto' control of Russia, and that's exactly the reason UN is currently can't do anything against Russian war crimes.

2. You may read it differently, only if you are kind of very biased towards 'beautiful' Yandex, cause even in official statement it was written that's due to Russian politics system :) plus - read Government statement before and after this board was appointment. - 2 of 12 government appointed? lets read:

The PIF will be governed by a board comprising 11 directors, including representatives from five leading Russian universities (Higher School of Economics, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Moscow State University, St Petersburg State University and the St Petersburg National Research University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics) and three non-governmental institutions (the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP), Moscow School of Management Skolkovo and the Endowment of Moscow School #57)

all above is government appointed and 'pro'-government.

3. Yes, that's what Tigran told as CEO. We have to care about 20k employees and all that bullshit when at the same time Yandex.ru page showed all news that 'everything is fine, there is no war, some special kind of operation against nazi' being one of the major player of Russian propaganda.

No, you can't be 'anti-war' and doing that, you can't be silent, and yes if 20k stopped to worry about have 0 ability to buy new iPhone and millions of people service disrupted may be we saw not 4k people on the streets of Moscow but 100k-200k and then we could talk with government.

So yes, exactly that behavior allowing corrupt and crazy government doing anything they want.

lets talk about 'small things' as you say: 1. Bullshit. Meduza, novaya, skr - they could do it. they could close it as you say but they choose not. They are currently sold Yandex news to VK group, but basically they are telling look we are showing not Yandex news, but VK-news on our main page - we have no power over there. Disgusting.

// It is quite clear that in the recent years Yandex was trying to migrate from Russia as soon as possible to be less dependent on the whims of the regime. They did find the niches where they could be successful outside of Russia (at the very least - delivery, taxi and ride-heiling, cloud) but didn't have time to execute the plan.//

They were trying to do it as part of Yandex Group. So no, they was not trying to 'migrate from Russia', they was trying to find new markets, like they was trying do search in Turkey at 2010.

1. Fair point. I did think about that later. Anyway, the only veto power the "golden share" has, is about transfer of ownership.

2. You are talking abut PIF board. I am talking about Yandex board. 2 of 12 Yandex board members are appointed by PIF.

3. Are you located in Russia or know people or organizations located in Russia who openly stated their anti-war statement while still being in the Country? I personally know a couple of people who have to spend a few years in prison now. Not much fun. I know a lot of people who moved away and stated their position openly, knowing that they can't be reached now. Yandex is obviously not in that position.

> They were trying to do it as part of Yandex Group. So no, they was not trying to 'migrate from Russia', they was trying to find new markets, like they was trying do search in Turkey at 2010.

They did. And 60% of revenue (in Russia) is coming from the services which were trying to expand abroad. As well as they started relocating employees in offices in other countries. If Yandex had any real business outside of Russia (which it finally had a chance to have) then it would have been a lot more willing to stand openly against this stupid shit.

> if 20k stopped to worry about have 0 ability to buy new iPhone and millions of people service disrupted may be we saw not 4k people on the streets of Moscow but 100k-200k and then we could talk with government.

We saw 100k people in 2011, nothing really changed. And that is when we had way milder police force. Right now, we gonna have more people in prisons when they try to come out to protest. _If_ they come out, because if I learned something, is that a lot of Russian people would say "OK, fine, fuck those rich software engineering bastards, we used to live without hot water, we can live without a few internet websites" (and go use competing services)

Also you missed the part where I talked about obligations to shareholders. I doubt most of them are willing to lose all they have invested. And CEO is kind of supposed to act in their interests.

> They are currently sold Yandex news to VK group, but basically they are telling look we are showing not Yandex news, but VK-news on our main page - we have no power over there. Disgusting.

I am not sure that this is the plan, they haven't yet sold anything yet, so we don't know what will happen once they do. I doubt that they will do that (VK group is a direct competitor, and news will still be perceieved as part of Yandex if they are show there). I don't want to speculate further until we see what happens.

I am probably as much unhappy about what is happening as you are. But I do think that Yandex was a net-positive for Russia, and the mistakes that they've made (by not closing news) are bad but they wouldn't have changed anything in the course of history.

https://meduza.io/feature/2022/05/05/my-zamuchilis-borotsya

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