History of Yandex

Yandex paid its first dividends to shareholders — $100,000. This was a first not only for Yandex, but also for the Russian internet.

An important change took place at Yandex.Direct: the service switched to auction-based ad placement and payment per click. Advertisers no longer paid for ad displays, but for visitors — that is, click-through traffic to a site. Advertisers decided the price per click for themselves, as is the practice at an auction.

Yandex released the service Spamooborona, based on proprietary technology for protection against email spam. The technology took thousands of characteristics email messages into account to sift out spam. It was available to users of any email service, not only on Yandex.