Yandex is Russia’s biggest online-search company. It symbolises the country’s whole internet economy: a bit smaller than expected, but growing fast, and clearly Russian.

Last year, the number of Russians online went up by 14%, to 53 million. That made Russia’s online population Europe’s biggest. GP Bullhound, an investment bank, however, reckons that only 18% of those people shop online.

Russian companies dominate the market. Yandex gets about 60% of online searches, according to a research firm. Google gets a quarter and Mail.ru is by far the biggest e-mail service and online-games platform.

The Russian internet market looks more like China’s than that of the West. Baidu dominates Chinese search. When the Chinese buy online they use Dangdang, 360buy or one of Alibaba’s online marketplaces instead of Amazon or eBay. They post on Sina Weibo, not Twitter.

In important ways, Russia is different. It has nothing like China’s wildly popular online-video sites, loved because censored TV in China is so dull. Unlike China, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are not banned. Foreigners have been much freer to enter Russia, but still have difficulties.