15 September 2015. The Russian search engine Yandex has opened an office in Shanghai. It doesn't plan to take on local giant Baidu in the Chinese search engine market directly, but instead intends to help Chinese businesses that want to target Russia. In a statement, a Yandex spokesperson said: “Shanghai is now headquarters for a team that will help Chinese companies, operating in the Russian market to more effectively promote their services and products in the Russian segment of the internet using Yandex technology.” Yandex has been offering advertising services in China since 2012, with sales in the country tripling every year since 2013. Its physical entry into the Chinese market reflects the two countries' increasingly close trade relationship, with imports and exports between the countries having increased significantly in recent years. Yandex is not the first Russian internet company to open an office in China, with the popular Russian social network VK having opened an office in the country last year. Yandex is the most popular search engine in Russia, where it has around a 60% share of the search engine market.
