Yandex — Company news — Yandex and Google Announce Advertising Partnership for Real-Time Bidding

Internet, February 26, 2014. Yandex (NASDAQ: YNDX), one of the largest internet companies in Europe and the leading search provider in Russia, today announced that Yandex and Google have entered into a mutually beneficial strategic partnership agreement in respect of online display advertising sales. Through this partnership, DoubleClick Bid Manager, Google’s Demand-Side Platform will be connected to Yandex’s Real Time Bidding system, while Yandex’s Demand-Side Platform, AWAPS will join Google’s RTB marketplace, DoubleClick AdExchange. The agreement only relates to display advertising, and does not cover text-based contextual advertising. Technical integration is expected to take several months.

Real-time bidding (RTB) is a new technology that allows buyers to evaluate, bid on and purchase ad inventory on an impression-by-impression basis. As a result of the integration of Google’s and Yandex’s RTB systems, Google’s advertising clients will gain access to the advertising inventory offered by publishers in Yandex’s Advertising Network, while Yandex’s advertising clients will be able to bid for display inventory in the DoubleClick AdExchange. This partnership will result in a larger number of bidders, which is expected to also boost revenues for the most sought-after advertising spaces.

“The integration of the two advertising systems will undoubtedly stimulate the online advertising market,” said Nikolay Danilov, head of Sales Technologies at Yandex. “The transparency that is characteristic of RTB systems creates new possibilities for growth. The more players, the wider range of ad inventory, the greater the competition for placement, and the higher the quality of the ads themselves. We anticipate that the partnership with Google will result in increased display advertising sales and improvements in ad quality.”

“We are happy about this partnership that will help to develop the RTB ecosystem in Russia. Given the adoption speed of RTB in this market, accessing local and global qualified inventory is key to our publishers and advertisers who are looking for incremental reach. We are very excited to see the Russian market moving towards innovative programmatic solutions that can serve both branding and performance strategies in reaching their targets in a more efficient way,” said Frank Einecke, Head of SEEMEA Media Buying Solutions, DoubleClick.

Yandex launched its RTB system in 2012. Several DSPs (Demand Side Platforms) are connected to it, including Yandex.Direct and Yandex’s display ad placement system AWAPS. Some of the sites in the Yandex Advertising Network have already entered the RTB system and others continue to sign on. According to comScore, as of January 2014, the Yandex Advertising Network covered 96% of Russia’s internet audience. Read more about Yandex’s RTB system in Products and Technologies on the company website.

Google’s DoubleClick products provide ad management and ad serving solutions to companies that buy, create or sell online advertising. The world’s top marketers, publishers, ad networks and agencies use DoubleClick products as the foundation for their online advertising businesses.

Contact:
Media Relations
Vladimir Isaev, Ochir Mandzhikov
Phone: +7 495 739-7000
E-mail: pr@yandex-team.com

Yandex — Company news — Yandex and Google Announce Advertising Partnership for Real-Time Bidding

US intelligence analysts feared Russia would dump hacked and forged Burisma emails targeting Biden as an ‘October surprise,’ report says

© Reuters US intelligence analysts feared Russia would dump hacked and forged Burisma emails targeting Biden as an ‘October surprise,’ report says

• US intelligence analysts suspected at least as far back as last month that a mixture of hacked and forged emails from the Ukrainian company Burisma Holdings might be dumped online as an “October surprise,” The New York Times reported Wednesday.
• Russian military-intelligence hackers successfully breached Burisma’s servers in January, The Times reported earlier this year.
• Wednesday’s report said analysts contacted people with knowledge of the hack because they were concerned “the Burisma material would be leaked alongside forged materials in an attempt to hurt” the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden.
• Earlier Wednesday, the New York Post published an article purporting to feature a “smoking-gun email” between a Burisma executive and Biden’s son Hunter.
• As Business Insider reported, the authenticity of the Post article is highly questionable, and its sourcing raises numerous red flags.

US intelligence analysts suspected at least as far back as last month that a mixture of hacked and forged emails from the Ukrainian natural-gas company Burisma Holdings might be leaked online as an “October surprise” in the 2020 US election, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

News that Burisma had been hacked first surfaced in January. The Times reported then that the GRU, Russia’s main military-intelligence agency, was responsible for the breach and that its hackers had been trying to access Burisma’s servers since at least November.

After US intelligence identified plans to dump stolen emails, analysts contacted “several people with knowledge” of the Burisma hack, The Times reported.

The paper said the analysts were concerned “Burisma material would be leaked alongside forged materials in an attempt to hurt” the candidacy of the Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden.

Earlier Wednesday — the month after US intelligence was said to be aware of plans to release the hacked and forged material — the New York Post published a dubious story about a “smoking-gun email” between Biden’s son Hunter and a top Burisma executive.

It said the email dated from when the elder Biden was vice president and Hunter Biden was serving on the board of Burisma.

Though the authenticity of the email remains unverified, Trump and his allies have seized on the report as proof of their allegations of corruption against the Bidens, Burisma, and the Ukrainian government.

But as Business Insider reported, the story featured numerous holes and red flags:

• The Post learned of the purported emails from the former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and obtained them from Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani.
• The story cited an unidentified computer-repair-shop owner as originally obtaining the emails last year after an unidentified person dropped off a water-damaged laptop with a Beau Biden Foundation sticker on it but never picked it up.
• The shop owner is said to have made a copy of the hard drive and given it to Giuliani’s lawyer in December before turning the material over to federal authorities, the article said.
• Business Insider identified the owner as John Paul Mac Isaac, an avid Trump supporter and conspiracy theorist who could not recall the timeline of events laid out in the Post’s story, for which he was a primary source.
• The Post recycled numerous false claims about the Bidens’ connection to Burisma that have been amplified by Trump and those around him, despite their being debunked.

Trump, Giuliani, and their backers have repeatedly claimed that Joe Biden improperly used his power as vice president in 2016 to remove from his position Viktor Shokin, the Ukrainian prosecutor general.

They say Shokin was conducting a criminal investigation into Burisma while Hunter was on its board. In other words, they claimed Biden used his office to protect his family’s personal interests.

As Business Insider reported last year, that theory has some significant issues, not the least of which is the fact that Biden was representing the same position held by the US government, most of the West, and institutions like the International Monetary Fund in calling for Shokin’s firing.

The criticism of Shokin was that he wasn’t going after corruption hard enough, rather than the reverse.

Also, the Burisma investigation was also largely dormant at the time of Shokin’s ouster, as Bloomberg reported.

And, according to The Wall Street Journal, government officials and Ukrainian anticorruption advocates said Shokin had actually hampered the investigation into Burisma long before Biden entered the picture.

Per these reports, by calling for Shokin’s firing, Biden was doing the opposite of what Trump has implied: He was increasing rather than decreasing the likelihood of an investigation into Burisma.

The sequence of events around the Burisma hack resembles the Russian government’s hack-and-dump operation during the 2016 election. At the time, the GRU breached the servers of the Democratic National Committee and took thousands of emails that were damaging to then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Russian hackers then leaked the emails via the fake personas Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks, as well as through WikiLeaks, which Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — who previously served as CIA director — once described as a “tool” of the Russian government.

A US security official told The Times in January that Russian hacking attempts against Burisma “appear to be running parallel” to efforts by Russian spies in Ukraine to obtain material that might embarrass the Bidens.

Area 1, the cybersecurity firm that uncovered the Burisma attacks, said in a report that Russia’s hacking technique then bore significant parallels to the 2016 DNC hack.

Oren Falkowitz, a cofounder of Area 1 who was previously a National Security Agency employee, told The Times that the hack looked like “a repeat of Russian interference in the last election.”

The US intelligence community concluded over the summer that the Russian government was again meddling in the 2020 election in an effort to hurt the Biden campaign and boost Trump.

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US intelligence analysts feared Russia would dump hacked and forged Burisma emails targeting Biden as an ‘October surprise,’ report says

China to relax its internet restrictions for 100,000 students hit by Australia’s coronavirus travel ban

China has agreed to relax its internet restrictions, after lobbying from the higher education sector, so international students can study online while they are banned from Australia during the coronavirus outbreak.

Currently more than 100,000 Chinese students, who already have Australian student visas and were planning on commencing their studies this month, are stranded outside of Australia as a result of the government’s 14-day travel ban from mainland China.

On Wednesday, Australia’s Global Reputation Taskforce – an emergency council of universities and education providers – met with education minister Dan Tehan and trade minister Simon Birmingham to discuss how they could limit the potential $8bn hit to the economy.

Phil Honeywood, the chair of the taskforce, told Guardian Australia the ministers had secured new pathways for online courses – which would let isolated students keep their Australian enrolments.

But he warned that a visa approval freeze means Australia could “absolutely lose out” to competitors as Chinese students could easily “go down the road” and obtain student visas for the US, the UK or Canada instead.

The government has not yet announced if the travel ban will be extended by another fortnight, but education providers are “not optimistic” and preparing for the worst.

Honeywood, who is also the head of the International Education Association of Australia, said internet restrictions would be lifted for students, so they could reach university portals for lecture recordings and slides, among other sites.

“There have been challenges over many years with online learning into China but the Chinese government has acknowledged that a more effectual arrangement is appropriate because of the isolation,” he said.

“We’ve been able to make good progress on online learning options into China. There have been really worthwhile negotiations with the Chinese embassy. A number of platforms have been agreed to to deliver online courses to students who are offshore still.

“Not all courses will be suited to online delivery. There will be issues with which units of study can be provided, for what period of time. [But] it is definitely a better situation than we were facing a couple of weeks ago.”

But the universities are concerned that new visa delays, combined with the travel ban, mean Australia could lose out to other countries.

New student visa approvals have been frozen by the department of home affairs since 1 February, even for students who have already been accepted by Australian universities.

Acting immigration minister Alan Tudge confirmed to the Australian that the department was “not finalising applications for individuals currently in mainland China” due to “enhanced border measures”.

International students contributed $34bn to the Australian economy last year. Australia’s main competitors for Chinese students, Canada, the US and the UK run on a different academic year, starting in September, meaning they are less disrupted by the coronavirus outbreak this year.

“The issue we have got is visas allegedly bring processed but not approved,” Honeywood said.

“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. If you’re a student, and you can’t get an Australian student visa to travel, any time you can go down the road to the Canadian embassy or the US embassy and they are still happily approving visas.

“Chinese students, even if they can’t travel to Australia now, once they have been given a student visa to come and study in Australia, they can once the virus is contained.

“But because no visas have been approved, they are thinking ‘How long is this going on for? Even when the virus is contained, I can’t come to Australia to study because of the whole visa process. I’ll go to Canada and the UK and delay my start date.’”

Honeywood said education minister Tehan was working with immigration minister Tudge “to get some clarification about what might be possible in that visa approval space”.

Meanwhile, individual universities are also offering alternate course schedules for affected students. Melbourne’s Monash University has already pushed back the start date of its semester by a week, while the ANU in Canberra has announced a semester during the traditional winter break to allow Chinese students to catch up on courses.

Other universities, such as the University of New South Wales, have recently changed to a trimester system, and are encouraging students to defer their enrolment to the next trimester, which starts around the beginning of June.

Honeywood said the universities “have to abide by the chief medical officer’s determination” on the length of the travel ban, but that Australia’s higher education sector was uniquely vulnerable to the delay.

“More than other study destination country, we are caught by geographic location and the fact that our academic year starts at the start of the calendar year,” he said.

“Whereas our main competitors, like Canada, the US and UK, their academic year doesn’t start until later, in September. They aren’t faced with a large influx of Chinese students wanting to commence studies until later this year. Australia and New Zealand are in a particular set of circumstances which no other competitor study destinations have.”

China to relax its internet restrictions for 100,000 students hit by Australia’s coronavirus travel ban

a brief Handshakes drawn with the US skipping China Completely

For Now Aggressive Russia has drawn a brief Handshakes with the US skipping China Completely and building new Concrete & simulteneously Discrete parallel internet world order !