Russian watchdog rules that Google is violating competition rules across Android devices
Google's Russian competitor Yandex claims that it is abusing its smartphone operating system domination.
Russia’s competition watchdog has ruled Google has violated competition regulations for the compulsory bundling of its apps on Android devices which it says has shut out rival offerings.
The competition watchdog has ordered the company to stop abusing its "dominant" market position in the Android mobile phone market.
Amid high political tensions, Russian regulators investigated a complaint from Yandex, Russia’s leading search engine, which claimed that its US rival was monopolising its position. Google has prevented smartphone makers from pre-installing Yandex’s services on Android phones and has shut it out of the Play Store.
It is not the first time that that Google has faced legal scrutiny for the way it controls the Android ecosystem. EU regulators are carrying out a similar probe into the way the company mandates pre-installed apps. It successfully held-off a US lawsuit claiming that it harms smartphone buyers by forcing Samsung and others to pre-install Google apps on their Android phones.
Google’s presence in the Russian search market has growing recently which has hurt Yandex’s. Recent estimates from Yandex: LiveInternet reported that Yandex’s share of the market has shrunk to 57.3 per cent in Q2, down from 58.6 per cent in Q1 and 59.7 per cent in Q4.