Arkady Volozh has been with Yandex since the very beginning, when it was only a basic indexing system. From ’89 to ’99 Yandex was a project of CompTek, with Volozh as the company’s general director. The pivotal point in both Yandex’s establishment and Volozh’ career was Febuary ’00, when Yandex became a separate company and Volozh its general director. Yandex is now an Internet business that includes a search engine, e-mail domain, Yandex TV, Yandex Guru and Yandex Pictures. The portal handles some 1 200 000 inquiries a day boasts an audience of over 10 million people.

Arkady Volozh graduated in applied mathematics from the Oil and Gas Institute in 1986. Two years later he began working at a small privately owned company called Arkadia. It was here that the prototype of the Yandex search system was later engineered. In 1997 Comptek created the yandex.ru website as an application of its search technology. The search engine’s distinguishing feature was that it searched for morphological details, had compact index and good speed.

Yandex has developed a lot over the years, what is it now?
When we first started creating our system it was like a library catalogue or a huge reference book. Today, it’s not only a place where you get directed to Websites to find the information you are interested in; now you can ask a question and get a relevant answer, not just to find a book on a given subject, but to find out how, for instance, the word “vague” is pronounced in Russian.

What are the most serious problems that e-companies experience nowadays?
For companies like Yandex, the only problem is persuading the production and industry people that the Internet is a type of media they can use to communicate with potential customers, just like TV, radio, newspapers and billboards.

you think our businesses are ready for the Internet age?
They are ready in general, but it takes time to adapt. Do you remember when the first ad appeared on TV? It was around 1989, during the program “Vremya.” It was an Olivetti ad. Radio ads appeared in the beginning of the ‘90s on FM radio stations. Right now, the advertising market is large. The situation with the Internet will be just the same; in two years it will be viewed just like any other advertising space.

What are your ways of moving ahead in Yandex?
We have a lot to offer, we don’t have to use a hard sell. First of all, the Internet already has a huge audience. But sometimes people think of the Internet in outdated terms; for instance, they may use figures that are half-a-year old. This is why they can say something like: “Your Internet portal?? can only be accessed by 3 million people,” but that number doubles or triples every year.

In Russia, we have a population of 140 million people, though it is true that only 40 million have real purchasing power. But if we’re talking about Internet penetration into the sector with purchasing power, the ratio isn’t less then in an average European country. We stand in 15th place in the world in terms of number of Internet users, immediately following England, Germany and France and preceding Spain. We have more Internet users than half of all European countries.

You talk a lot about advertising on the Internet. Does that mean Yandex will shift from being a search engine to an Internet portal and finally to an advertising tool?
No, no, no. We work for two types of customers. We communicate with 10 million regular customers, and we offer them a number of services, just like TV offers both entertainment and information. And here we’re talking about attracting people by offering quality tools like the search engine and other features.

The other side of our work is offering our users as an advertising audience for our clients. For these clients, we are not a search engine or an e-mail domain, but a means of identifying the potential client bases for their businesses. If you are interested in people who are planning on buying a car in the next six months, for instance, we can identify them.

How do you do that?
It’s easy. It’s all done through the search system. People tell us what they want 1,200,000 times a day — the number of inquiries we process every 24 hours. For example, we may have a request for a Honda CRV, and, as the site opens, it may also contain ads for Honda or another car manufacturer, or for tires or paint.

Which of Yandex’s projects is the most popular?
According to the statistics, it’s the search engine. We are currently the most popular search tool in the country. We handle over 40 percent of the total amount of Internet inquiries in Russia. It is obviously due to our technology: The results of our searches are the most successful.

Do you interact with foreign search systems? What happens if I enter a phrase in English?
We perform the search on Ru net (the Russian Internet). Yandex’s space includes all the territories of the former Soviet Union in whatever language the document is written, even if it’s Chinese. We search through all the Russian-language information or information pertaining to Russia. So if you enter something in English, you will find a great deal in our database. Besides, at the bottom of our page there is a note saying that if you haven’t found the information you need in Yandex, you can continue your search on other search engines.

Is there any difference in the set of qualities a person doing e-commerce should possess as opposed to a “real” businessman?
First of all again, we are doing real business here. Just like any conventional company, we deal with people, salaries, revenues, etc. We have a regular venture business. The sphere of venture business is very wide and the high-tech segment always requires risky investments for research and development, but finally it all breaks down to regular business. Our business is that we sell advertising space. We attract users by our services and then we sell the attention of the users to advertisers. The scheme is simple and a large part of the economy works according to it — TV and radio, for example. We are different because we not only entertain people, but also offer other vital services. We are part of the mass media but we don’t have to fight for the audience’s attention.

People wake up and drive to their workplaces and listen to the radio. In the evening they watch TV. Newspapers are a good example here; they strive to get their issues onto managers’ desktops during work hours, trying to win an audience. This is something the Internet already has. Computers are turned on when people start working and everybody has access to the information the advertisers want people to have. The Internet is available on five or six million desktops — for advertisers, it’s an ideal environment to deliver their message.

How has your life been influenced by your status as Man of the Year? And how did it happen that you presided over the jury while Yandex participated in the contest?
Somebody had to be president of the jury. I tried to refuse, saying that Yandex was among the contestants, but the argument was that I would not have to do anything. My responsibilities were to take part in the opening press conference and sign the award certificates. And that was what actually happened. But, when signing the certificates 10 minutes before actually giving them out to the winners, I saw Yandex among the winners. I had no choice but to sign the award. It was strange when I had to sign the certificate, which read “To the Man of the Year, Arkady Volozh.”

No one actually knew who the winners were except the three organizers. The voting procedure was confidential, and no one was allowed to vote in the category where he participated. The winners became known only 10 minutes before the award ceremony. I am just happy that I don’t have to participate in any other “public activities” — I’ve done my duty.