It was February 11, his birthday, and the 58-year-old billionaire CEO and cofounder of Yandex, the Russian tech behemoth, was in the sort of open, engaging mood that could be called privetliviy, after the casual Russian word privet for hello. He was speaking from his car in Tel Aviv, bragging about his father-an oil geologist in his eighties who had "discovered" oil in Israel, Volozh said-as we chatted about my upcoming trip to Tel Aviv to interview him for this story. For more than 20 years, Yandex has been known as "Russia's Google": It began as a search engine in 1997 and still has a 60 percent share of the Russian search market. But for the past decade, this tag has understated the company's inescapable ubiquity in Russians' daily life. Yandex Music is the country's leader in paid music streaming, and Yandex Taxi is the top ride-hailing app. Millions of Russians use Yandex Navigator, Yandex Market, Yandex News, and Yoo Money (formerly Yandex Wallet) to get around, shop online, read, and spend money.
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