Co-founder of Russia's most popular search engine dies

Ilya Segalovich, the co-founder of Yandex (Russian Internet giant and search engine) died on Thursday night at age 49, the company's official blog said.

The statement signed by CEO Arkady Volozh says that "everything happened too quickly and unexpectedly." The cause of death of Segalovich has not been made public yet.

Russian entrepreneur, programmer and social activist, known as one of the founders of Yandex, Ilya Segalovich was born in 1964. In the early 1990s, along with his classmate Arkady Volozh, Segalovich coined the word "Yandex", which they later used to name the jointly developed technology to search for unstructured information.

Segalovich stood at the origins of the most popular search engine in the Russian Internet, which currently exists as an Internet portal providing a variety of services. In recent years, he served as the technical director of the company. Also, along with his wife, Maria Segalovich, he was engaged in charity work in Children of Maria.

UPDATE: It has been reported that Ilya Segalovich has not died, but remains in a coma. He is connected to the life support system, but shows no indications of brain activity.

Photo: Yandex.ru