Ads in free internet services

Ads in free internet services

You think Google is evil with their ads? Russia took ads on a new level.

Some internet pages are blocked in Russia. If you try to access them, you'll end up on a landing page of your internet provider. And guess what you will see on such page. Right, ads.

blocked_ads

In web e-mail from Yandex ads are turned on by default: web_ads

However, there is a setting to turn it off: web_ads_settings

And interestingly enough there are no ads and no setting if one switches language interface to English. webmaulenglishsettings

Another popular Russian product Yandex.Navi. Navi is a turn-by-turn navigation app. Yandex offers rich set of assistant voices. I found one particularly funny, it's label was "Whitecat Gourmet". It is actually cool to have such things as they make computer systems less dull.

Anyway, this voice have been produced in a great cooperation between Yandex and... well whitecat Gourmet company. Some other voices were of a similar nature. I think you do not hear any ads while driving, but all voices have a short intro, which is played when you select it.