18(a) Describe the mission/purpose of your proposed gTLD

Prototypical answer:

Who we are:-

Yandex, LLC is the leading internet company in Russia, operating the most popular search engine and the most visited website. We generated 63.3% of all search traffic in Russia in 2011 and 60.6% in December 2011, and our Yandex sites attracted 45 million unique visitors in December 2011. We also operate in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Turkey. Our mission is to answer any question internet users may have. To that end, we utilize our capabilities in applied mathematics and data analysis and our in-depth knowledge of the languages, cultures and preferences of internet users in our markets to develop advanced search technology and information retrieval services. We also aggregate and organize extensive local, national and international content and offer a broad range of additional services. Our search and many of our services are location-based and are available in versions tailored for mobile and other digital platforms and devices.

Benefiting from Russia’s long-standing educational focus on mathematics and engineering, we have drawn upon the considerable local talent pool to create a leading technology company. For over 20 years, our founding team has been developing and optimizing search technology, which has formed the core of our business and helped Yandex become one of the best known brands in Russia. Our users are our first priority, and we are committed to advancing our technology to continuously improve their internet experience.

Our search engine uses our proprietary algorithms to provide relevant results, which we structure and present in an editorially neutral and user-friendly manner. With a focus on our principal geographic markets, our search technology allows us to provide local search results in more than 1,400 cities. We also feature ‘‘parallel’’ search, which presents on a single page the results from both our main web index and our specialized information resources, including news, shopping, blogs, images and videos. We offer convenient access to our search engine through personal computers, mobile phones, tablets, and navigation and other digital devices. We also offer a wide range of specialized search, personalized and location-based services, including Yandex.News, Yandex.Market, Yandex.Mail and Yandex.Maps.

Our homepage attracted over 40 million unique visitors in December 2011, accounting for 76% of the Russian internet audience in December 2011, according to comScore, and provides a gateway to the wealth of information available online. Users can find answers to their explicit questions through our search box, as well as their implicit questions through current news, weather and road traffic reports, TV and movie schedules, personal email and other services. Our homepage can easily be customized by users to address their individual interests.

We derive substantially all of our revenues from online advertising. We enable advertisers to deliver targeted, cost-effective ads that are relevant to our users’ needs, interests and locations. Most of our revenues are derived from text-based advertising, which uses keywords selected by our advertisers to deliver ads based on a particular user query, the content of a website or webpage being viewed, or user behavior or characteristics. We derive a smaller portion of our revenues from display advertising, which principally consists of graphical ads that appear on specific webpages. Our ads are clearly marked and are separate from our organic search results and from the content of the webpages on which they may also appear. We do not serve intrusive ads, such as ‘‘pop-ups,’’ that might detract from our users’ experience.

In addition to serving ads on our own search results and other webpages, we deliver ads to the thousands of third-party websites that make up our Yandex ad network. Through our ad network, we generate revenue for both our network partners and us and extend the audience reach of our advertisers. Our Yandex.Direct service, the largest automated, auction-based system for the placement of text-based advertising in Russia, makes it easy for advertisers to bid for desired keywords and to obtain the best price for their ads. We served ads for more than 173,000 advertisers in the fourth quarter of 2011 and more than 270,000 in the full year 2011, compared with more than 120,000 in the fourth quarter of 2010 and 180,000 in the full year 2010, including many small and medium-sized businesses throughout Russia and the other countries in which we operate.

Our Existing Services:-

We offer a broad range of search, location-based, personalized and mobile services that are free to our users and that enable them to find relevant and objective information quickly and easily and to
communicate and connect over the internet, from both their desktops and mobile devices.

We operate on a multitude of domain names generic and cctLD e.g yandex.com, yandex.ru


Yandex Search
Our search engine offers almost instantaneous access to the vast range of information available online.

Yandex Homepage
Our homepage provides a gateway to the wealth of information available online.

Yandex.News.
Our news aggregation and information service, the most visited online news aggregation service in Russia.

Yandex.Market
Our price comparison service, the most popular such service in Russia.

Yandex.Mail
Provides users fast and easy access to their email accounts, has 17.6 million users, according to comScore.
We believe this makes us the second largest provider of free email services in Russia.

Yandex.Maps
Our map service is the most popular map service in Russia, with 13.9 million unique visitors in December 2011.

Yandex.Server
Our server application for indexing and searching files in various popular formats on web servers, local networks and database management systems

Yandex.Direct
Our auction-based advertising placement service


Mission and purpose:-

The mission and purpose of this TLD is to provide a global, consistent identity on the Internet of .yandex and all related institutions. As such, .yandex intends to limit registration of domains either for its exclusive use or for use by closely affiliated organizations in a manner that contributes to the purpose of this TLD. .yandex also intends to govern the domain names registered to limit confusion and enhance user experience. To accomplish these objectives, .yandex may be the sole registrant of domains in the TLD. However, due consideration has been made to all aspects of registry operations including the functions and policies defined below.

Goals

Our business depends on a strong brand, and failing to maintain and enhance our brand would harm our ability to expand our base of users, advertisers and network partners.

We believe that the brand identity that we have developed through the strength of our technology and our user focus has significantly contributed to the success of our business. We also believe that
maintaining and enhancing the Yandex brand, is critical to expanding our base of users, advertisers, network partners, and other business partners.

We therefore propose the gTLD of .yandex to become the focal point of our Internet presence for our external services and to become our naming strategy for our products and internet projects.

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