Search engine and web portal Yandex plans to introduce its own Internet browser, in an effort to keep market share versus Google and better promote its own services, a source at the Russian company told Vedomosti.
The browser could be out as early as October, the source said, while another confirmed it would happen in the fourth quarter of this year or first quarter of next year. The plan is to produce a browser for personal computers and smart phones running iOS and Android.
It's not clear whether the browser will be designed in house or partially based on freeware. A spokesman for Yandex declined to comment.
In April, Yandex general director Arkady Volozh told Interfax the company would push its own product if it determines it's necessary. The search engine has for some time had its own browser, called Yandex.Internet, based on open source code, Volozh added.
It's common for search engines to pay browser firms to make their service the default search tool. Google, for example, recently signed a three-year contract with Mozilla, the maker of Firefox. For a fee of $300 million per year, Mozilla agreed to use Google as its primary search engine for all countries, including Russia.
Earlier, in the Russian version of Firefox, the default search engine was Yandex.
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