The man responsible for setting up Russia's largest search engine website died today after losing a long battle with cancer. The 48 year old co-founder of "Russian Google" Yandex, Ilya Segalovich, passed away on Saturday in a hospital in London, according to co-founder and friend Arkady Volozh.

Volozh said that his business partner was diagnosed with stomach cancer last year. Despite responding well to treatment, the Yandex creator developed brain cancer which caused his death. Earlier, the company's website said that Segalovich was already brain dead and was living only via life support. Doctors decided that the situation was futile, and removed the life support moments after.

"We couldn't make a miracle. We only could offer a chance for it to happen," said Volozh. He said that they had hoped for a diagnosis error, but they knew that chances are close to impossible.

Yandex was founded in 1997 by schoolmates Volozk and Segalovick. The so-called "Russian Google" controls over 62% of the entire search engine market in the country, while worldwide leader Google only had 25.6% of the market share. 

Yandex was coined by Segalovich, which was derived from the phrase "Yet Another Index". He only had 2.5% share on the company, but his voting power amounted to almost thrice his stake at 7%. Analysts believe that unlike the death of Steve Jobs, Yandex stocks will be unaffected by the death of its founder.