Yandex Browser from our Russian Comrades

Yandex is a search engine that competes with Google and Yahoo!, mainly for Russian users.

Some time ago they developed their own web browser, which I very briefly mentioned in my piece about Chrome.

Yandex is not just another Chrome type clone. They really have gone out of their way to make something unique and innovative. Yandex uses a transparent interface so it blends right in with the website you are viewing. This is more than the hiding toolbar from view in full screen mode (F11) in other browsers like Firefox and feels a lot more professional.

At setup you can choose to use either Google, Bing or Yandex as your search engine.

Yandex also incorporates the "speed dial" feature, first trailblazed by Opera, when you open a new tab. Admittedly I have a hard time getting used to this as I tend to fill my bookmark toolbar with the sites I visit frequently for quick access. But those who like a more simple interface will probably prefer the speed dial over having 2 or 3 toolbars in view.

Adguard is present by default, which works fine. Adblock Plus works as well if you prefer it. I also installed one of the extensions that downloads flash and videos that was meant for Chrome and it worked fine. I can't say for sure how well Chrome extensions will or will not work in general, though.

One of the things I appreciate most about Yandex is also one which originated with Opera: Turbo Mode. When you are using a slow connection, it works in various ways, such as fetching compressed data or blocking flash (unless you click to view it) to speed things up for you. Right now I'm sharing a house with no internet connection, so I have to go to the library. Things are usually pretty speedy on the public WiFi, but after the library closes sometimes I use the internet from home and that means tethering from my BlackBerry. I'm on Mobilicity so I have "unlimited" data, but of course that just means once I use over 6 GB they start to throttle the speed, which can get pretty bad. It sometimes reminds me of the days of using a 28.8k modem; it was simply really bad using my normal browser.

When I set Turbo Mode to automatic in Yandex, it really did make a huge difference and browsing became tolerable again. I can imagine this feature would not only be useful for people living in Siberia but also Nunavut and other remote places that still rely on dial-up connections.

Yandex also comes with some things like "Share to Facebook" and "Tweet" features that I find handy.

However, Yandex Browser is still beta and it shows. In general I think of it as a drunk bear; strong, hairy, good looking but kind of clumsy and you probably don't want it in your house. Yeah it's kind of kewl to have a bear around, but all the broken furniture and stuff wouldn't be worth it. This Bear needs to be tamed first.

Why? Well first of all I had Yandex crash on me on several occasions. It felt clunky and laggy all around when switching and opening new tabs like it was taking a lot of power to go. Each tab is it's own process like in Chrome and when I checked task manager I saw that some tabs were using up to 200k of memory and more. To give you some idea, Pale Moon with 10 tabs open might take up 600k in total (unless there's a memory leak). When using Opera Beta the tabs average 50-100k each.

Yandex might run better on a higher end machine in 64bit, maybe something with 8 GB of RAM or more and a kickass CPU. I'd be willing to give it another spin but they definitely are going to have to make it run more efficiently. My Acer Aspire 7720-6335 is no doubt dated, but it should be able to handle a common piece of software like a web browser. In fact, once I opened 5 or more tabs they started to display improperly. Not good.

I'm currently giving Opera Beta a spin and plan to try out a new Opera fork called Vivaldi. It looks like it might have similar features to Yandex and hopefully it will run smoother.

Yandex is available for Windows, Mac, Tablets and Smartphones. However, I can't recommend Yandex just yet. 

I encourage people to keep their eye on it. It has a lot of potential and has been regarded as a bold step. It is nice to have something out there to compete with Google, that's not an American product and not afraid to try something more radical of an interface than Firefox's rather tame Australis.