Google opens up Android in Russia

Google agrees to pay ~$7.8M and open up Android in Russia to settle two-year antitrust dispute with Russian competition watchdog FAS originally filed by Yandex

On April 17, 2017, the two-year legal process between the Federal Antimonopoly Service and Google ended up with a voluntary settlement in the Moscow District Court of Arbitration. The settlement will help eliminate the violations of the antimonopoly legislation previously detected by the FAS Russia and will ensure competition on markets of mobile applications, especially mobile search.

Let us remind that as far back as in September 2015 the FAS Russia established that Google had violated Part 1 Article 10 of the Federal Law “On Protection of Competition” by abusing its market dominance.

The FAS Russia found violations in the Google’s actions which resulted in prohibition of pre-installation of other developers’ competing applications. As a result, due to refusals in regards to other manufacturers of mobile devices, pre-installation of mobile applications, which is the most efficient app distribution channel, was fully reserved by Google.

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Image credit: Reuters