new home page
“Yandex” will leave the news aggregator and develop ya.ru as its new homepage, reported on the website of an IT company.
“After the closing of the transaction for the sale of media assets – Zen and News – ya.ru will become the main entry point to Search, Mail and other company services, including the personal account of the Yandex ID user,” the message says.
In addition, the company will release a new Yandex application for Android with Alice. Press service “Yandex” announced that the core of the new homepage and new application will be a search engine.
“On Ya.ru, users will have access to a universal search – to search for anything anywhere, vertical search – for example, to find pictures or products, and Alice – to quickly get a response. You can see how the new homepage will look right now – on new.ya.ru,” explained Yandex.
Only the search bar opens on the link-accessible page – no news, no messages from Zen, no ads yet. Just under the search engine, you can find out the weather on the street, the degree of traffic congestion in the city and the current exchange rate.
Agreement with VK in the Delivery Club
Also on the Yandex website seen a message that the company has purchased the Delivery Club food and grocery delivery service. Yandex agreed with VK on its purchase on August 22.
“The company will continue to develop the Delivery Club brand, and the app and website will work as before. After the deal is closed, Delivery Club and Yandex.Food will move to a single technological platform. Due to this, the density of orders, that is, their number per square kilometer, will increase even more. Couriers will be able to make more deliveries within the region and earn more accordingly. Users, in turn, will receive orders faster, and restaurant options will expand,” Yandex promised.
The company added that couriers collaborating with Delivery Club will have access to the Yandex.Pro platform, which distributes orders and creates optimal routes. At the same time, deliverers will retain and receive the benefits already offered by the Delivery Club: insurance for the time of delivery, a sick leave analog, and legal assistance.
The company said its Delivery Club partner restaurants will have the opportunity to expand its delivery footprint through integration with Yandex.Delivery. As planned, this will attract new customers and increase the number of orders. In the future, restaurants will also be able to access promotional tools developed by Yandex and accept and accumulate Plus points.
“According to our estimates, the market for delivery of ready-made food and groceries in 2021 exceeds 650 billion rubles. The delivery service is offered both by private services and by the organizations themselves – you can order on their website or by phone. With delivery becoming a daily service for millions of people, the market for the next We expect it to continue to grow at least 20% per year over the years. The merger with Delivery Club will allow us to devote more resources to development and to respond more quickly to requests from users, restaurants, shops and couriers,” said Dmitry Masyuk, Yandex food technology director.
Yandex noted that on August 22, a binding agreement was signed, in which the company bought the Delivery Club service and VK’s Zen and News services.
The deal is expected to be completed in the coming months. It requires coordination with the Federal Antimonopoly Service,” the company concluded.
“Zen” and “News” in VK
In order in VK reportedHe announced that they have decided to sell Delivery Club, which was consolidated by VK during the restructuring of O2O Holding, a joint venture between VK and Sberbank. The company announced that it plans to complete the deal by the end of 2022. After that, VK will acquire the rights to technologies and trademarks of Zen and News services.
The press service added that after the closure of the transaction, “Zen” and “News” will be available on the dzen.ru portal, “where other services and the Yandex search line will also be placed.” At the same time, Zen will preserve the content monetization tools available to authors, and users of the platform will be able to choose where it is more convenient to read and watch content: on the dzen.ru portal or in a mobile application.
“The creation and development of user-friendly content services is the main strategic task of VK. Zen is a unique and popular platform among millions of people, one of the market leaders with great development potential. As a result of integration with VK, Zen writers will have the opportunity to realize themselves in new formats and reach a new audience. Users will receive even more high-quality entertainment and educational content, ”says Vladimir Kiriyen, CEO of VK.
He noted that the company “highly appreciates” the results achieved by the Zen team and considers it right to “give the team an opportunity to develop independently.” According to Kiriyenko, this will “make it possible to bring new content products to market faster and more efficiently and improve existing ones, increasing the audience.”
The asset exchange agreement between Yandex and VK will have a positive effect on the quality of services and can lead to the creation of new sites, aforementioned Anton Gorelkin, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Information Policy Committee “socialbites.ca”.
“The quality of service will only increase, and this is good for Russian users. We need a serious competitor to American YouTube. I am sure that a video service will grow on the basis of Zen and the VK video platform, which was previously constrained by the capabilities of the social network, and I hope it becomes a competitor. <…> In a difficult economic and international situation, we see how holding companies are finding effective solutions for further development.”
According to the politician, the agreement between the companies was expected and beneficial for both parties.