Page 89 - RusRPTJune18

Yandex has launched Yandex.Plus subscription service for RUB169/month, unlimited music steaming , ad-free movies, discounts for taxi and car-sharing rides, free delivery on certain Yandex.Market orders, and "other benefits" from the Yandex ecosystem. A couple of things going on here: efforts to add users across a range of Yandex products plus efforts to build a more-or-less stable stream of subscription revenue
Yandex launched Yandex.Station, an analog of Amazon Echo/Google Home, etc. This is the first hardware product from Yandex and something they've been hinting at since last year at least. The system includes Yandex's Alisa voice assistant and is the first system designed specifically for the Russian market. The system can perform some 4,000 tasks ranging from ordering pizza to finding flights, interacting both with chatbots and human customer service operators as necessary. Goes on sale this summer for RUB9,990 ($160) and will include one-year free subscription to Yandex.Plus
Russian encrypted messaging app Telegram has scrapped plans to hold a public issue of digital tokens , Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal reported on May 3 citing unnamed market sources. Reportedly the argument is that the company needs no additional funds after raising a record-high $1.7bn in two rounds of private ICOs , but Bloomberg suggests that increased scrutiny on the digital token market would make Telegram more susceptible to regulatory risk after a public sale. Bloomberg reminds that the US Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulators have warned that tokens sold in ICOs should be treated as securities and have cracked down on a handful of ICO projects. Telegram, founded by Russian self-exiled digital entrepreneur Pavel Durov, has been waging a war with Russian communications watchdog Roskomnadzor for more than two weeks, which is unsuccessfully trying the block the messenger on Russian territory. Blanket blocking of IP address clusters hosted by Amazon and Google to limit the use of Telegram have led to frequent disruptions of over 400 of Russian internet services, according to estimates of soft developer Flexbby cited by Kommersant daily on April 26. At one point Roskomnadzor even managed to shut down its own site by mistake, while Telegram has operated throughout the campaign. Moreover many Russian politicians are openly defying the ban and continue to use the service. The total cost of constantly migrating to new IP addresses for Telegram, as well as cost of repairing collateral damage for other services is estimated at $2bn, with Amazon and Google possibility losing an estimated $940mn due to the disruption of their cloud services.
Russian anti-virus software company Kaspersky Lab says it will move its data and major processing centre out of Russia to Switzerland by the end of this year in a bid to win back customers’ trust, the company said on May 15. The company has been accused of helping the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) spy on foreigners both with and without the company’s knowledge. The move will see the majority of the company’s customer data storage and processing activities relocated to Zurich, with an independent third party employed to supervise the process and ensure “full transparency”. Operations concerning threat detection and software assembly will also be relocated, New Economy reports. Kaspersky also plans to open a ‘transparency centre’, in which stakeholders will be able to examine the source code of the firm’s products, as well as its software updates. “As a leading global cybersecurity solutions provider, Kaspersky Lab has always been committed to the most trustworthy industry practices, including strong
89 RUSSIA Country Report June 2018 www.intellinews.com