Russian antitrust says to agree on amicable deal with Google soon

MOSCOW, Mar 21 (PRIME) -- Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service plans to agree on an amicable deal with Google within 10 days, Director Igor Artemyev told reporters on Tuesday.

“We’re working with them; they’re discussing (the matter) with us. We need, perhaps, a couple of more days, a week or 10 days to agree on possible conditions…As you know, they’ve offered an amicable agreement,” Artemyev said, adding that the service sees the U.S. giant guilty of abusing its dominance on the local market of preinstalled application stores on Android devices.

The watchdog is ready for the deal if Google admits its guilt and mends breaches.

The antitrust service earlier fined Google for 438 million rubles, or 9% of its turnover on the application store market in the country in 2014 and punished Google Inc. and Google Ireland Ltd. with 500,000 rubles each. All penalties were challenged.

Several court hearings of disputes between the service and Google were earlier delayed because of the amicable talks.

(57.2847 rubles – U.S. $1)

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