UPDATE 3: Antitrust dislikes Yandex’s slogan promoting service as number one

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MOSCOW, Jul 27 (PRIME) -- The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) believes that a new slogan of local Internet giant Yandex, promoting the company as Russia’s number one search engine, could show signs of a law violation, a watchdog spokesperson said on Thursday.

“The Federal Antimonopoly Service thinks that slogan ‘search engine number one’ placed on the Yandex Web site under the logo could testify to the presence of signs of violation of the antimonopoly law. The service is studying an opportunity to apply measures of antimonopoly influence in this case,” the spokesperson said.

The law forbids unfair competition with the help of incorrect comparison of a firm or its products with other firms or products, including the use of such superlatives as “best,” “first,” “number one,” and others.

According to the watchdog’s practice, if violations are discovered, the service issues a warning or checks the company. If the warning is ignored, the authority opens a case. If the service’s commission decides that the slogan violates the law, Yandex will be fined from 100,000 to 500,000 rubles and face a warrant.

Asya Melkumova, head of Yandex’s press service, said an advertising campaign with the slogan “search number one in Russia” was launched on Wednesday.

“According to data of LiveInternet, ComScore, and others, Yandex is a search engine number one in Russia. In June, Yandex’s search share amounted to 51.3% (by LiveInternet),” she said.

FAS Deputy Director Andrei Tsyganov said Yandex will have to bear responsibility for the slogan if it lacks indication by whose data and as of what moment the information is true.

“To put it mildly, our law on advertising does not support such things, and clause 14 of the law on competition reads that if you find yourself the best, the most important, number one, you should at least ground it. If they write it in small letters that by calculations of somebody as of that data they are such, this can be done. If not, they will have to answer for what they’ve done, for misleading all of us, consumers of search engines,” Tsyganov said.

Yandex asterisked his slogan about 5 p.m. Moscow time in response to the antitrust service’s observation.

After clicking on the slogan, a window pops up with an explanation of parameters used to name Yandex as “Russia’s number one search engine” with a reference to the number of transfers from the search systems as of June calculated by LiveInternet.

(59.9102 rubles – U.S. $1)

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