A few things:

- There are a lot of Googlers on HN, not so many Yandex-ers

- Google, in the general public's minds, is buoyed by positive mindshare that was generated a very, very long time ago (early-to-mid-2000s). Today's Google has appreciably changed from those days, and yet their likeability has mostly been unaffected.

- Google tried to make their lack of focus official by spinning off a corporate umbrella parent by the name 'Alphabet', like Philip Morris Companies the "tobacco" company renamed itself to 'Altria' in 2003 because at the time it owned 84% of Kraft Foods Inc., a large food and beverage company [1].

I maintain that to an American, Yandex is most analogous to Yahoo or AOL rather than Google, because Google is, as of writing, a company that makes money primarily from ads and is under transition to pursue higher revenue streams from business-to-business sources (like Google Cloud Services) more so than by brokering advertising. Whereas Yahoo or AOL are tech-media hybrids. I know Yahoo and AOL don't evoke such positive brand power anymore than, say, Google, but their structure I believe is more reflective of Yandex.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraft_Foods_Inc#Philip_Morris_...

Rambler (rambler.ru) is more like Yahoo, not Yandex. Like Google, Yandex is more service-oriented, Rambler is more media-oriented. Rambler's numbers are also going down during many-many years, like Yahoo's. It alsotruggling from crazy rotations of C managers each few years during last ~15 years

Like for Google, the main revenue stream for Yandex is also ads – they have >50% in market share in Russia, context ads network and RTB. With good Partner Network accepting websites. From recent products, Yandex.Taxi is a huge success, also taking leadership on Russian market, beating Uber and Gett. So with strong leadership in search, ads and young taxi markets in Russia it doesn't even close to Yahoo in comparison, it's definitely "Russian Google".

I agree with you, and add that to a russian, the leader is yandex, not google. Now, I'm not saying that it's all relative, google is objectively be a better company in most respects. But in terms of the mindshare that you talk about, yandex beats google in russia.

Not really "trying Google roadmap", because in some areas (search, maps, mail) Yandex was first. They were not as successful, however, due to the focus on Russian market, management and technology specifics and business climate.

It's not really different, it's just that Google became well known when it only had Search.