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Russia is in a cold war with democracies in general and a hot war with Ukraine. It has an autocratic dictator as leader and state control of media.
It has a well documented propaganda campaign with the goal of destabilising other countries through agitation. We even know the address of the building in Saint Petersburg it's run from.
Why would anyone try to assess Yandex's results? They could be like a slot machine serving good results 78% of the time and slipping propaganda in when least expected.
Why bother with that when there are good, free alternatives?
Trade war with half the planet, hot war with Iran. Autocratic dictator as leader and complicit media. Well documented propaganda campaign and history of destabilising countries around the world. Known to compel tech companies to spy on foreign citizens...
What is your experience with it?
Edit: The best search for my purposes historically has been on Pinterest. Unfortunately, not anymore. I normally search for visual artifacts (photos, art, schematics, etc), out of all search engines Google is still the only one that is somewhat functional for me in this regard.
I tried DDG, Kagi, Yandex. None of them worked for me.
How about topics that USA censors?
Of course you should not search Ukraine info on yandex. But you are only showing the worst case scenario. What's the average and best case?
How is Yandex more morally-bankrupt than Google in your analysis?
Yandex does Putin's bidding much much further than any western search engine ever meddled with their results for political purposes. Yandex employees' lives would be actively at risk if they didn't.
Sometimes I really wish a hard reality check would meet the people making such comments from the comfort of their programming chair or from thousands of kilometers away.
Does media manipulation score higher/lower on your moral index than the widespread domestic spying the US has forced tech companies to be complicit in?
Not that media manipulation by the US government is exactly an unheard of event (at least as far back as the whole WMDs in Iraq scandal).
> Sometimes I really wish a hard reality check would meet the people making such comments from the comfort of their programming chair or from thousands of kilometers away
Look, I'm American myself, and have as keen a dislike of Russia's foreign and domestic policies as the next guy. But it is at best wildly hypocritical to suggest that US tech firms are not subject to government interference, in a manner that may be detrimental to their customers.
It is very different degree of subjection where we talk about country that have laws, politics, сourts, journalism, all that stuff, and country, where if you dare even to complain about some wild highly illegal stuff that the kgb demands corporation that you working for to do, you end up getting 30 years in prison for treason, falling out of the window, getting poisoned by some chemical weapon, and even then you will be considering yourself a lucky man because nothing very, very bad had happened to your family.
Post patriot act, we have none of those things in instances where the government invokes national security (for example, a national security letter can compel release of data without a court order, and comes with a pretty serious gag order)
Of course Google is morally much better than Yandex. What sane mind would even question this? The fact that I'm getting downvoted just shows how out of touch this bubble is with real life.