Yandex Does What Google Can’t: Provides Bitcoin Exchange Rates

How much is one US dollar in UK pounds? Google will give you a direct answer to that and many other currencies with the conversion tool that’s built into its search results. But when it comes to Bitcoin, Russian-based Yandex seems to have won the honor of being first to support conversion of that currency.

The new feature, which digital currency news site Coindesk spotted, only seems to work on Yandex in Russia, as opposed to Yandex.com. Entering a search like “bitcoin dollar” brings up the exchange rate and a currency calculator:

Google has long had a similar feature for major world currencies, as you can see with this example for “dollar pound” below:

Google’s currency exchange box can be triggered in a variety of ways, such as with a search for “1 dollar in pounds” or “dollar exchange rate.” But for Bitcoin, nothing makes it appear. So, I guess it’s stay-tuned to see if Google will support Bitcoin in this way. I suspect Google will add it fairly soon. The same is also likely for Bing, which provides currency conversion just like Google, but not for Bitcoin.

For those who don’t speak Russian, you can always use CoinDesk’s own Coindesk Bitcoin Calculator to do conversions, which may be what Yandex itself is using, Coindesk says.