MOSCOW, July 31 (RAPSI) – Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) is analyzing largest web search engines, Yandex and Google, over alleged preferential resource allocation, RIA Novosti reported Monday.
In late June, the European Commission fined Google 2.4 billion rubles ($40.2 million) for abusing its leading position on the web search market. In particular, Google search system prioritized the corporation’s own Google Shopping service. If Google fails to mitigate the situation it may be subjected to sanctions up to 5% of parent company Alphabet’s worldwide daily revenue.
According to the FAS, it is researching Google’s case and overall behavior of web search companies on the Russian market.
On May 16, Google paid all administrative fines imposed by Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) as part of antitrust investigation. Administrative proceedings against Google over its refusal to comply with the watchdog’s order were terminated after an amicable agreement had been achieved on April 17 in a dispute between the FAS and the U.S. company. The settlement was approved by a federal court and a two-year-long legal battle between the watchdog and Google finally came to an end.
In September 2015, the watchdog held that Google Ireland Ltd. and Google Inc. abused their dominance on the Russian market of mobile applications by preinstalling applications on Android smartphones and therefore violated anti-monopoly law. Google was fined but refused to comply and challenged the FAS order in Russian courts. Later, the FAS imposed additional fines against Google, amounting to nearly 1 million rubles ($16,600) in total.