Turkcell launches new search engine Yaani

Turkey's leading cellphone operator Turkcell announced the launch of its new search engine called Yaani on Wednesday.

Having its own search engine puts Turkey among the important countries in the world, said Turkcell's CEO Kaan Terzioglu, at the promotional event for the search engine in Istanbul.

"If we want to have a voice in the new era, we have to keep our digital data in our country and turn them into innovative services," said Terzioglu.

He added that data will become the most important source of power.

"With Yaani, we are getting into the search engine market, one of the most data-generating services," he added.

He stressed the fact that it was not Turkcell's search engine but Turkey's as well.

Information will be stored in Turkey's biggest data center in Gebze, near Istanbul, he said.

"Yaani understands Turkish very well. It's learning as people search. Thus, each time, we will have better search results," said Terzioglu.

Yaani is derived from the Turkish word "yani", an interjection that can be roughly translated as "What I mean is...".

Terzioglu pointed out that the word is also used in Turkcell's target markets, the Middle East and Russia, as he says, it has a similar meaning in Arabic and is easy to say in Russian.

"Our primary goal with Yaani is to reach 25 percent of market share in Turkey," he added.

Yaani can be downloaded for free from AppStore and Google Play application stores, he said.

In Turkey, GSM-based mobile communication when Turkcell started operations in 1994. Since then, it has continuously expanded its services based on mobile audio and data communication.