UPDATE: Russian antitrust, Google fail to stay friends, court to decide

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MOSCOW, Aug 16 (PRIME) -- Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service and Google have not find a compromise on the latter’s abuse of dominant position on the local market of preinstalled application stores, and an ongoing court procedure will draw the line in the case, the antitrust authority said Tuesday.

“Talks with Google on an amicable agreement turned out to be futile. The court will put an end to the case. Hearings will start tomorrow at 10 a.m. (Moscow time),” Yelena Zayeva, head of the service’s department for information technologies regulation, said.

The Ninth Arbitration Court of Appeal announced earlier on Tuesday a break until Wednesday in its hearings of Google’s cassation appeal against a lower court’s decision that supported the antimonopoly service.

The reasons behind the delay were not disclosed.

The antimonopoly service fined Google with 438 million rubles with the company obliged to pay the penalty within 60 days. The antitrust case was initiated by Yandex, Google’s main rival on the local search market.

(64.2076 rubles – U.S. $1)

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