Yandex Go Outage in Kazakhstan: Users Look for Alternatives

inDrive itself first found itself in a scandal: demand in the app surged sharply, and prices soared along with it. Company founder Arsen Tomsky responded quickly. In his Threads, he announced that on Sunday the commission for drivers was reduced, which made it possible to attract tens of thousands of new people. At the same time, the company limited the bargaining range to curb price growth.

"We received tens of thousands of new applications from drivers, many quickly went online, and prices started going down within a few hours," Tomsky wrote.

What About the Competitors?

Green SM, a project previously named as a possible competitor to Yandex.Taxi, did not publicly react to the sudden surge in demand — no comments appeared in the company's accounts. Users on social media write that few drivers remain in the service, and the waiting time for a car has increased compared to August-September.

Kazakhs are also recalling how they got around the city before major aggregators appeared: haggling with private car drivers who agreed to give rides to fellow travelers. People are nostalgic about trips from one end of Almaty to the other for 500 tenge and remember jokes about this "people's service."

"When cars stopped like that and stood there for a long time driving past, my dad would say: 'Look, an interview is going on,'" users share.

"That's how we learned to behave in aggressive negotiations and not give in," writes another participant in the discussions.

What Did the Outage Show?

Yandex Go had been long and systematically squeezing competing companies out of the market. Now customers don't understand why the tech giant had no backup plan in case of data center failures. As a result, the operation of such major sectors as taxi services and food delivery in Kazakhstan turned out to be dependent on events in a neighboring country.