The Verge reports that the majority of tablets and mobile phones sold in the largest country in the world run on Android, and local search engine competitor Yandex NV complaint that Mountain View was abusing its position.
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A penalty of $6.8 million has been issued by Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) against USA tech giant Google, for violation of fair competition laws in Russian Federation.
“We have received a notification from FAS about the imposed fine”, Google’s press service said on Thursday in a written statement. The fine comes after Russia-based search engine Yandex (YNDX) filed a complaint against the competitor past year. Google motivated its decision by saying that advertising revenue generated from its services helps the company recover the costs of providing Android OS for free. But, today is another grim day for the tech giant as Russia’s national regulator has fined it with 438 million rubles ($6.75 million).
“Google must pay the fine within 60 days after the order enters into force”, a spokeswoman for the Antimonopoly Service told RIA Novosti.
Google has been found guilty of forcing Android smartphone makers to install its search engine on their devices, which has been seen to breach “protecting competition” laws. However, it is just one of many antitrust cases being thrown in Google’s direction at the moment.
Earlier in the year, Google was at crossroads with tax regulators in the UK. Yandex now holds 60% of Russia’s search engine market, which isn’t a negligible share.
Margrethe Vestager, the European Union’s top antitrust official, charged Google in April with unfairly using Android to promote its own services – like Google Maps and Google Search – over those of its rivals.
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In January 2016, Head of FAS Igor Artemyev said Russia’s competition law violation penalty for U.S. Google Corporation will most likely amount to 7 percent of the turnover in 2014.
