Russian Company Yandex Beats Amazon, Google With Country's First Smart Speaker

A giant tech company is throwing its hat into the smart speaker ring, but it's not a widely known brand in the United States. Russian search engine giant Yandex will beat Amazona and Google to the punch with its new smart speaker: Yandex.Station. More and more homes are adopting Amazon Echo and Google Home devices, which allow users to request music, control lights and perform a wide variety of other tasks using their voices. In a Tuesday blog post on its website, Yandex claimed the upcoming Yandex.Station smart speaker would be the first such product for the Russian market. It will also be the first piece of hardware produced by the company, according to the blog post.