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Yandex -- the Google of Russia -- has unveiled its cloud storage service along the lines of Dropbox or, yes, the Google Drive.
Known as Yandex.Disk, the application is available in English, Russian and Turkish, and though it's officially a beta, you can use it with devices running Android, iOS, OSX, or Windows, synchronizing files across multiple devices.
Yandex is one of the few search engines that have managed to hold off the Google monopoly. In China, Baidu dwarfs Google in the traffic wars, and in Russia, Yandex is the search engine of choice. Otherwise, Google pretty much rules the search-engine world.
Now, Yandex hopes to compete with Google on a new front.
With Yandex.Disk, you start off with 3GB of storage for free, but you can increase this to 10GB by installing the app, uploading files, and inviting a friend. And you can get up to 20GB by inviting more friends. There's no word yet of a premium service that would compete with services like Dropbox Pro, Box and Egnyte. There is, however, an API for developers wishing to integrate their apps with the service.
Yandex.Disk was launched in beta in April, and it has been shipping with Samsung Ultrabooks since last month.
Yandex is stepping into a crowded and very well funded market. Investors have been pouring millions of dollars into this type of storage service. Last year, Dropbox raised $250 million. Meanwhile, competitor Box raised $81 million for a valuation of over $600 million, and it's raising even more money according to the Wall Street Journal.
According to Forbes, Dropbox declined a nine-digit acquisition offer from Apple in 2009, and the Wall Street Journal reports that Box declined a $700 million takeover offer from Citrix earlier this year.
At the same time, the giants of the web are building their own services. Apple introduced iCloud last October, Microsoft re-launched SkyDrive in April, and Google launched GDrive the next day.
But much like its U.S. counterparts, Yandex has been expanding beyond search into other areas, such as digital music sales, e-commerce, and much more. The company has also been inching into international markets with English- and Turkish-language products and services.
