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June 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 10
Russian internet major Mail.ru launched its own voice assistant
Russian internet major Mail.ru launched its own voice assistant called Marusya in test mode, Vedomosti daily reported citing unnamed sources.
Reportedly, Marusya's functionality is currently limited to information queries and launching music from Mail.ru's social network VKontakte, which could later be expanded to food delivery, e-commerce, ordering taxi, etc.
Vedomosti claims that the development of the assistant cost $2mn. In May 2018 Mail.ru's main rival Yandex unveiled an AI-driven Yandex voice assistant Alisa, analogous to Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, and Google Home assistants, which was integrated in Yandex's smart speaker
and voice assistant device Yandex.Station (Yandex. Stanciya).
Alisa is also integrated into Yandex.Avto system that will be installed on the dashboards of over 2mn vehicles produced by Avtovaz, a major recent win for Yandex.
The launch of Mail.ru's Marusya "is expected and a natural move for one of the largest internet companies in Russia," BCS Global Markets commented on June 17.
"It has a wide set of services to integrate into the assistant, which could offset it having less expertise in search and speech recognition (basis for voice aid), for instance, Yandex," BCS GM analysts note.
Russian internet major Yandex to produce own video content
Russia's internet major and most valuable digital company Yandex hired Nikolai Golovin, ex-head of production of Pyatnica! TV channel, to helm its own content production unit, Vedomosti daily reported on May 20 citing the sources in the company.
Previously Yandex outsourced a handful of shows from Red Square production house of stoligarch Arcady Rotenberg, which mostly produces shows for state- run First Channel. The internet major also report- edly ordered production of several series in the end of 2018 to 2019, with completion dates undisclosed.
Some of the content released by Yandex would re- portedly be subscription-based, while some would be monetised by advertising.
Online media assets are in focus as one of Rus- sia's "big four" operators MobileTeleSystems
(MTS) considers an acquisition of “the Russian Netflix,” online cinema provider ivi, the market leader with a 36% share, for RUB20bn ($309mn). Russia's largest bank Sberbank also plans to buy a stake in major internet media group Rambler controlled by Alexander Mamut.
Yandex might be turning to production of in-house content and partnerships with producers as adver- tisers online start to demand quality content for the placements, industry analysts told Vedomosti daily. Yandex has also been in cross-fire with Russia's largest media holdings and rights holders, which limits its ability to stream third party content.
In the first case of its kind in Russia, in August 2018 Yandex.Video streaming service risked being blocked if it failed to remove links to illegal copies of TV series produced by Gazprom Media holding.