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Comment by sevg

12 hours ago

But is Yandex government owned? What about Russians abroad that send money back home to their families, and a percentage of that ends up going via taxes to Putin? Are we boycotting all Russians everywhere globally?

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sevg

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distances  9 hours ago

All businesses based in Russia should be boycotted, also second-hand (so businesses that deal with other businesses based in Russia).

If I knew someone was sending money to Russia, I would of course avoid any contact (let alone financial ties) with them.

Ray20  8 hours ago

> But is Yandex government owned?

In fact, yes. Yandex is totally controlled by Putin's presidential administration.

> What about Russians abroad that send money back home to their families

It doesn't seem like a significant factor. The main flow of money into Russia are payments for fossil fuel and trade balance with China.

tumdum_  12 hours ago

Yes, we boycott anyone who supports Putin’s regime.

  • sevg  12 hours ago

    Hate to break it to you, but not all Russians support Putin.

    • notpushkin  11 hours ago

      I think the OP’s point still stands, but it is a fairly weak argument.

      I am Russian and I do oppose Putin’s regime. My family is in Russia, though. If I send them money (which), and they pay for, say, groceries, which are taxed, some tiny part of my money will be used to fund the regime and the war. I am very disappointed but there is no way for me to just yank all my family and friends and relocate them to a less fucked-up jurisdiction.

      Doing business with Yandex is a whole other beast. Kagi can choose to use a worse search engine API which doesn’t involve paying money to a Russian company. Are there some market forces at hand here? Maybe a lot of Russian expats pay for Kagi because it has good Russian-language results? I don’t know.

      Edit:

      > But is Yandex government owned?

      It isn’t, but I really doubt it has no ties with it. It would be interesting to trace and see if Yandex Cloud’s international branch money gets back to its Russian counterpart, or if they are two separate things.