Arkady Volozh contacted Ilya Segalovich to develop algorithms for searching Russian texts. They formed Arcadia and created search software together.

Arkady Volozh and Ilya Segalovich coined the name "Yandex" as an easy-to-remember term for "Yet Another iNDEXer." The name also serves as a bilingual pun, referencing the Russian word "Я" ("ya") meaning "I."

The Yandex.ru search engine was officially launched and showcased at the Softool exhibition held in Moscow.

Yandex introduced contextual advertising on its search engine platform.

Yandex was officially incorporated in Cyprus as an independent company.

Arcadia became part of CompTek, a software and computer part supply company, with Arkady Volozh as the CEO.

Baring Vostok Capital Partners acquired a 35.72% stake in Yandex for $5.28 million.

Yandex launched the Yandex.Direct online advertising network.

Yandex achieved profitability as a company.

Tiger Technologies acquired an 11% ownership stake in Yandex over a period of three years.

Yandex opened an office in Ukraine and launched a dedicated Ukrainian website.

Yandex introduced a customized search engine specifically for Ukrainian users and opened a development center in Kyiv.

Yandex increased bandwidth fivefold between its Moscow data centers and UA-IX in Ukraine.

Yandex announced the establishment of Yandex Labs in Silicon Valley, appointing Vishal Makhijani as its CEO, to encourage innovation in search and advertising technology.

Yandex acquired SMILink, a Russian road traffic monitoring agency, and integrated it into Yandex Maps.

Yandex acquired the rights to the Punto Switcher software program, which automatically switches keyboard layouts between Russian and English.

All services of www.yandex.ua were localized for the Ukrainian market.

Yandex began development on its project MatrixNet, a patented algorithm for building machine learning models.

Firefox 3.5 replaced Google with Yandex as the default search provider for Russian-language builds.

Yandex launched its "Poltava" search engine algorithm for Ukrainian users, utilizing its MatrixNet technology.

Yandex launched an English language-only search engine.

Yandex launched Yandex Music, a music streaming service, offering a catalog of 800,000 tracks from 58,000 performers.

Yandex invested $4.3 million in a financing round by Face.com (formerly Vizi Labs).

Yandex launched Yandex.Start to identify and collaborate with startups, and acquired WebVisor's behavior analysis technology.

Yandex acquired single sign-in service Loginza.

Yandex N.V. (now called Nebius Group), the holding company that owned Yandex, raised $1.3 billion in an initial public offering on NASDAQ.

Yandex and Rambler entered into an ad network deal aimed at limiting competition from other Russian companies.

Yandex acquired The Tweeted Times, a startup focused on news delivery.

Yandex launched its web portal in Turkey and opened an office in Istanbul.

Yandex acquired a 10% stake in Blekko for a $15 million investment as part of a $30 million financing round.

Yandex acquired software developer SPB Software for $38 million.

Yandex began research and development within the field of natural-speech processing.

Yandex opened its first European office in Lucerne to provide services to advertising clients in the EU.

Yandex acquired a 25% stake in Seismotech for $1 million.

Yandex launched a web browser based on Chromium.

Yandex launched a mapping service for Europe and the U.S.

Yandex became the largest media property in Russia based on revenue.

Yandex added an English language user interface to its translation mobile app.

Mail.Ru began displaying Yandex Direct ads on its search result pages.

Yandex acquired KinoPoisk, the largest Russian movie search engine.

Yandex launched Cocaine, an open-source PaaS system for creating custom cloud-hosting apps.

Yandex opened its first European research and development office in Berlin.

Yandex invested several million dollars in MultiShip.

Yandex acquired Israeli geolocation startup KitLocate and established a research and development (R&D) office in Israel.

A film about the history of Yandex called Startup was released.

Yandex invested in SalesPredict, an Israeli company specializing in technology for predicting commercial sales.

Yandex acquired Auto.ru, an online marketplace and classified advertising website for automobiles, for $175 million.

Yandex launched a new Chromium-based browser for Windows and Mac OS X.

Yandex launched a minimalist web browser.

Yandex launched Yandex.Radio.

Yandex opened an office in Shanghai to support collaborations with Chinese companies operating in the Russian language market.

Yandex acquired Internet security company Agnitum.

The top-5 results on the Yandex home page only includes pro-Kremlin media approved by the Presidential Administration of Russia.

Yandex was banned in Ukraine by Presidential Decree No. 133/2017.

Yandex closed its offices in Ukraine after its bank accounts were blocked.

Yandex invested in a $5 million financing round by Doc+.

Yandex closed its offices in Kyiv and Odesa after the Security Service of Ukraine raided the offices and accused the company of illegally collecting Ukrainian users' data and sending it to Russian security agencies.

Yandex released the CatBoost library to the public. It implements the Matrixnet algorithm for the building of machine learning models.

Yandex introduced Alisa (Alice), its intelligent personal assistant, for Android, iOS, and Microsoft Windows.

Yandex acquired food delivery service Foodfox.

Yandex launched Yandex Games, an Internet gaming platform accessible via browser and mobile.

Yandex showcased the initial tests of its self-driving cars in Moscow.

Yandex acquired Uber's businesses in Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, and Georgia.

Sberbank and Yandex finalized a joint venture agreement to develop a B2C eCommerce ecosystem.

Yandex unveiled Yandex.Station, a smart speaker.

Yandex acquired fuel delivery service Toplivo v Bak.

Yandex acquired Edadil (Russian: Едадил), a deal aggregator service.

Yandex was targeted in a cyberattack using the Regin malware, aimed at stealing technical information from its research and development unit on how users were authenticated.

Yandex announced the release of the Yandex.Phone, a smartphone.

Yandex refused a request by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) under the Yarovaya law to surrender encryption keys that could decrypt the private data of its e-mail service and cloud storage users.

Yandex announced plans to create an investment portal in partnership with VTB Bank.

Yandex unveiled the second smart speaker of its own design, "Yandex.Station Mini."

Yandex Taxi acquired Partiya Edy ('The Party of Food').

Yandex was compelled by the Russian government to undergo a corporate restructure, which granted greater influence to pro-Kremlin board members.

Yandex made its home COVID-19 testing service available free of charge to all residents of certain areas.

Yandex terminated its joint venture with Sberbank, fully acquiring Yandex Market and selling its interest in Yandex Money, which was rebranded as YooMoney.

Yandex's offices in Minsk were raided by authorities to suppress protesters of the results of the 2020 Belarusian presidential election.

Yandex completed the corporate spin-off of its self-driving car division, Yandex SDG (now Avride).

Yandex held merger negotiations with Tinkoff Bank (now T-Bank) but the two sides failed to agree on terms.

Yandex admitted that one of their system administrators with access rights to Yandex's email service had enabled unauthorized access, leading to almost 5,000 Yandex email inboxes being compromised.

Yandex launched Yandex Pay, a cashless payment service.

Yandex was accused by the Federal Antimonopoly Service of promoting its own products in its search results.

Yandex, VTB Bank, LANIT Group, and Gigabyte established a joint venture to produce servers in Russia.

Yandex acquired Uber's stake in its self-driving car division and food delivery business in a $1 billion transaction.

The IT company's servers were subjected to the largest DDoS attack in the history of the Runet.

Yandex completed the corporate spin-off of Clickhouse.

Construction of a new plant in Ryazan Oblast was launched with 1 billion roubles during the first stage of investments. The new plant will produce servers, data storage systems, gateways and smart equipment under "Openyard" brand.

Yandex acquired Wind’s Tel Aviv operations.

Yandex acquired eLama, a digital advertising platform, and BandLink.

Yandex was threatened by the Russian government regarding information that it posted about Ukraine and added an online banner warning that some search results may contain inaccurate information.

Yandex was the subject of an investigation by Financial Times and Me2B Alliance, which found that a software development kit (SDK) called AppMetrica was harvesting data from more than 52,000 applications and storing it in Russia on Yandex's servers.

Tigran Khudaverdyan resigned as executive director and deputy CEO after being sanctioned by the European Union for "hiding information" from the Russian public through the manipulation of search results.

CEO Elena Bunina resigned and moved to Israel.

Arkady Volozh resigned as CEO and from the board of directors.

Yandex published the source code for the YDB database management system.

The company no longer displayed any national borders on Yandex Maps.

The bank accounts of the company's affiliates in Finland, including those of Yango Group, were frozen.

Zen, Zen News, and yandex.ru were sold to VK. Yandex acquired Delivery Club from VK. The company then changed its home page to ya.ru.

Yandex registered the company Beyond ML in Armenia to hold international investments.

Arkady Volozh resigned from the company.

Yandex opened an office in Belgrade, its biggest international office.

A leaked archive with 44 GB of Yandex source code was shared on BreachForums via BitTorrent.

Yandex launched YandexGPT, a neural network analogous to the ChatGPT neural network. It implemented the YandexGPT generative neural network in the virtual assistant Alice.

Yandex launched a test of its first self-driving taxi in Moscow.

Yandex was fined 2 million roubles by a Moscow court for its repeated refusal to share user information with the Federal Security Service.

Kinopoisk, a subsidiary of the company, was fined 1 million rubles for "showing films demonstrating non-traditional sexual relations".

Yandex introduced Yandex SpeechKit, a speech-recognition and synthesis technology as well as a public API for speech recognition that Android and iOS developers can use.

The company received 36,540 requests from the Russian government to disclose user data, a 12% increase from the prior year.

Nebius Group, the Dutch holding company that owned Yandex, sold its Russian assets to a group of Russian investors for a discounted price of US$5.3 billion.

The company was accused of collaborating with the Federal Security Service (FSB) to direct users to fake websites for the Freedom of Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps.

Yandex announced plans to invest $400 million in Turkey.