• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, November 15, 2023

Search engines face challenges as they look to protect assets during difficult economic times and the turmoil of war. Some smaller engines are either trying to sell off assets or partner with larger companies with strong technology they can capitalize on.

Yandex’s Dutch holding company is considering selling its Russian search engine assets, rather than keep a controlling stake.

The holding company could complete the deal by the end of the year, three people close to the matter told Reuters.

Yandex search held 65.95% market share in Russia, 1.83% globally, in October, per StatCounter.

Yandex, often referred to as the Google search engine of Russia, became one of the few companies in the country with the potential to expand globally until Moscow started its war with Ukraine in February 2022.

Yandex dominates the ride-hailing service operates in eight African countries with tests in Israel and the U.S., and online advertising in Russia.

Reuters points out that demands from the Kremlin to comply with certain rules forced Yandex to sell its news aggregator and other online resources to state-controlled rival VK in late 2022.

DuckDuckGo -- which has about 46 million users in the U.S. and Europe -- and Microsoft on Wednesday seemed to be working to renew their partnership. The two companies have collaborated on ways to handle fraud protection, location technology, and shopping experiences.

Steve Fischer, chief business officer at DuckDuckGo, declined to detail whether the company might work with Microsoft’s generative artificial intelligence (GAI) tools and technology, but didn’t say the two were not working on something.

This could explain why Fischer agreed to talk to advertisers on Microsoft Advertising’s monthly call with brands and agencies. This is where Lauren Tallody, senior product marketing manager at Microsoft, told attendees that an advertiser in the tech space working with DuckDuckGo garnered “32,000 incremental clicks a week at a 44% cost per click (CPC).

DuckDuckGo pushed browser and search privacy ahead of Google, Microsoft, and others.

The relationship between DuckDuckGo and Microsoft was going well until security researcher Zach Edwards in 2022 found that DuckDuckGo’s mobile browser allowed some Microsoft sites to bypass its tracker block. The browser was blocking trackers from Facebook and Google, an exception was being made for Microsoft.

That meant DuckDuckGo allowed data to transfer to LinkedIn and Bing, both domains owned by Microsoft.