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Microsoft sneaking into Putin's Russia

by on13 October 2015


All it cost was Bing

Software king of the world Microsoft has worked out a clever way to get its Windows 10 accepted in Tsar Putin's Russia without much trouble.

The outfit has signed a deal with the Russian Google, Yandex to replace Bing as the default search engine on Windows 10.

Russia's biggest search engine Yandex said on Tuesday Microsoft would offer it as the default homepage and search tool for Internet browsers across its Windows 10 platform in Russia and several other countries.

The companies have signed a strategic cooperation agreement, under which users in Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkey and Ukraine will be offered Yandex when upgrading to Windows 10, Yandex said in a statement.

It makes sense, Bing would probably miff Tsar Putin who does not like it when outside party's talk about him. He is likely to ask his minions to come up with all sorts of anti-trust strife for Redmond.

However, if Windows is pushing Yandex then he will have nothing to complain about. Yandex is run by one of his chums. It has remained completely loyal to him and Putin has gone out of his way to protect the search engine.

Yandex is listed on the tech-heavy Nasdaq in the United States, but has special local rules that only allow Russian investors and funds to be only invested in Russia.

If Putin does launch against Microsoft it means he has to harm Yandex too, and that is something he is not keen to do. All Microsoft loses is having Bing with its foot in the door in Russia. Bing is not popular in Russia anyway and Microsoft would rather have Russians using Windows 10.

Last modified on 13 October 2015
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