Yandex co-founder passes away

The co-founder and chief technology officer of Russia's market-leading internet search engine company Yandex has died after treatment for cancer, the Nasdaq-listed company said on Sunday.

Ilya Segalovich, aged 48, founded Yandex in 1997 with Arkady Volozh, the company's chief executive officer.

He passed away on Saturday after falling into a coma and being taken off of life support by doctors, Volozh said in a statement on the company's blog.

The duo coined the name "Yandex" - with "Ya" standing for the Russian equivalent to English pronoun "I" and the full name originally stood for "Yet Another iNDEX" but today is synonymous with internet search in Russian-speaking countries.

Yandex raised $1.4 billion in an oversubscribed initial public offering in New York in 2011 and it currently has a market value of $10 billion.

The company had a 61.7 percent share of the Russian search market in the second quarter, ahead of Google and Russian rival Mail.Ru Group, it said on Thursday.


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