Russian regulator deems Google broke competition law
MOSCOW. Sept 15 (Interfax) - A Russian Federal Anti-monopoly Service (FAS) commission on Monday deemed that Google Inc. and Google Ireland Ltd. had violated Section 1 of Article 10 of the Law on the Protection of Competition, a FAS representative told Interfax.
"The ruling and recommendation to stop abusing their domineering position will be ready within 10 working days and forwarded to the parties," the official said. By that time the size of the fine against Google will be determined.
The case against Google concerns the firm's domineering position on the market for pre-installed apps for the Android operating system. Google faces an order to halt the violations and faces a fine of between 1% and 15% of its revenue on the Russian market in the past year.
The FAS will instruct Google to end the practice of conditioning installation of Google Play on the requirement that mobile device manufacturers not place other services and Google applications on the first screen. The FAS found that Google exploits manufacturer interest in installing the Google Play app store to promote its own services, such as internet search.
The FAS also examined whether Google had engaged in unfair competition (Article 14 of the Law on Competition), but decided there was no violation. That aspect of the investigation has been halted, the FAS said.
"We welcome the favorable decision of the FAS, which has tackled a complex matter and, having studied the evidence, deemed there were violations on Google's part," a Yandex spokesman commented. "We await the instruction and the full text of the decision," the spokesman said.
Yandex said the examination of the matter confirmed the presence of agreements prohibiting the pre-installation of competitor apps and that Yandex was directly indicated in those agreements.
