Russian search engine Yandex has acquired Loginza, a local startup whose service allows developers to implement user authentication via the likes of Facebook, Twitter or OpenID-supported sites, without additional registration. Terms of the deal, which came about through Yandex’s “open days for startups”, an initiative as part of the Yandex.Start program, remain undisclosed.
As noted, Loginza’s single sign-in plugin supports authentication via Facebook and Twitter, along with Blogger, WordPress, VeriSign, AOL, Yahoo!, Flickr, Last.fm, LiveJournal, myOpenID and OpenID. It also supports authorization schemes of a number of Russian services: Yandex, Mail.Ru, Vkontakte, Rambler, WebMoney, Diary.ru and Loginza itself.
The Russian startup claims that its authorization form is installed on 6,500 sites, while its range of plugins support the likes of WordPress, phpBB, Joomla, Cogear, Drupal and other CMSes. Yandex says it plans to extend the list of supported providers and plugins and to translate Loginza to other languages.
Yandex says it’s on the hunt for other new and interesting projects, and to achieve this has partnered with a number of startup communities in Russia, including the GreenfieldProject, the Glavstart, the Higher School of Economics’ Business Incubator, the Academy of National Economy’s Business Incubator and the Techno Cup at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. To that end, the next Yandex.Start will be held on March 15th.