Russia’s Yandex favors European Commission complaints vs Google

MOSCOW, Apr 20 (PRIME) -- Russian Internet giant Yandex has welcomed grievances loudly voiced by the European Commission against Google over the use of its operating system Android, a spokesperson for Yandex said Wednesday.

“We back up the vector of official accusations from the part of the European Commission and think that further consideration of the case will be of a high importance for the formation of fair rules of work on the global level and on multiple local markets,” the spokesperson said.

The European Commission earlier said that upon results of a preliminary investigation it came to a conclusion that Google had violated the European antimonopoly law by demanding from device makers to preinstall its browser Chrome and Google Search, which impeded sales of devices working on rivalling operating systems, among others.

The commission initiated the antimonopoly investigation into Google in April 2015, which could threaten the U.S. company with a fine exceeding U.S. $6 billion.

A similar investigation was undertaken by Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service upon a request of Yandex. The authority found Google guilty of abusing its dominant position on the market of preinstalled application stores.

The Moscow Arbitration Court upheld the decision of the service, which will resume discussions of an amount of the fine for Google on May 11. The U.S. company earlier contested the court’s move.

“As far as we see it, the European Commission points to the same actions of Google, which were an object of concern of Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service. We are confident that the absence of limitations for the promotion of applications and services on mobile and other platforms will contribute to a transparent competition among applications and services to the benefit of all users,” the spokesperson for Yandex said.

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