Google Opposes Antitrust Accusations in Russia

Google is no stranger to being faced with anti-trust rulings worldwide, but this is the first time that the accusations have been put forth in Russia.

Back in September this year, the Russian search engine Yandex filed a complaint against Google with the Russian Federal Anti-Monopoly Service, which ruled in favor of Yandex. The complaint was centered on accusing Google of misusing its power as the provider of the popular Android operating system to pre-load the system with potentially dozens of mandatory Google applications.

As a result of the ruling, Google would be given until December the 18th to renegotiate its contracts with smartphone manufacturers to ensure compliance. This would mean that Google would be forced to sell Android phones pre-loaded with nothing but the Google Play Store.

Google seems to have no intention to take the ruling as is however, stating that they “intend to contest this decision and explain in court why we consider it unfounded,” on their Russian blog. Yandex rose to the challenge in a statement to Reuters, “Yandex is confident in every point of its position. We are ready for the appeal and welcome the most open trial.”

It seems like this is just the start of the battle between Google and Yandex, with Yandex requesting an investigation into potential infringements by Google from the EU, implicating Google in those territories too. And from a statement by the EU that Google is already under investigation, it seems like Yandex is not the only company to take issue with Google on the antitrust front.

It seems like Google will have to try to strike a balance between providing Android to the masses and pushing its own products on the platform by default if they want to escape flak from the rest of the industry. The question is, were Android not to come packaged with all the Google apps we are used to, would many users just not install them manually anyway?