Ukraine’s drones knock out AI data center belonging to "Russia’s Google"

Technically, Google is ‘USA’s Yandex’.

That’s not true.

• google.com launched 15 September 1997.
• yandex.ru was announced 23 September 1997.

Which makes them hilariously close, but Google still precedes Yandex, as their search engine websites were their first products.

Nope - A registered domain is not a launch -

Google was officially launched in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin to market Google Search

And

Yandex launched their first search engine in 1997 -

Yandex was founded by Arkady Volozh and launched its first product, a search engine, in 1997.

Double nope.

Google was officially launched in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin to market Google Search, [emphasis mine] which has become the most used web-based search engine.

Google Search had already existed since the domain was registered. (EDIT: See comments below. I don’t know that this is true. It seems google.stanford.edu was up as a functioning web search engine in 1997, but this is getting murky.) You’re talking about Google Inc. the company which was created in 1998. Google Search was launched in 1997.

However, by that comparison, it’s vastly less close, as Yandex LLC was first legally registered 14 September 2000.

TL;DR: You were comparing apples to oranges.

Search website:

• Google: 15 September 1997
• Yandex: 23 September 1997

Legally registered company:

• Google Inc.: 1998
• Yandex LLC: 14 September 2000

Edit: And to clarify, I think the sensible metric here, that works in Yandex’s favor by bringing the two within eight days of each other instead of approximately two years, is to use the date their search engine websites launched and were functioning, not when they filed paperwork that said “We’re legally a company now 🥳”.

That’s all well and good, but in Scrabble, GOOGLE only scores 8 whereas YANDEX scores 17.

ALTGIF of a distressed emoji with hands disintegrating into dust