Controversial Metalloinvest founder and Arsenal stakeholder Alisher Usmanov could drop a billion dollars into Russian search site Yandex.

Russian property Yandex has both Yahoo and Microsoft beat in the European search market, and trounces Google, too, in its homeland.  Now, a report has indicated that Yandex (or at least its name) may travel to New York to raise $2 billion in an IPO.

Europe’s full of different countries, and all that impressive European Union stuff aside, it’s hard to believe they’ve got much in common.  Yet judging from new comScore statistics, it seems as if Google is the sort of thing that’ll generate smiles, or at least recognition, everywhere.

China and India get all the attention from the major Internet players when it comes to growing Internet economies, but search advertising in Russia has a couple of local players dominating the field.