Story 2015-09-24 ND2Q Google violating Russian antitrust regulations by bundling its services with Android

Google violating Russian antitrust regulations by bundling its services with Android

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in google on (#ND2Q)
Russian antitrust authorities ruled on Monday that Google had abused its dominant market position with Android, its mobile operating system, by favoring the company's own services over those of rivals, including Yandex, a Russian competitor. Unlike in other parts of the world, where Google has outmuscled domestic search rivals, Yandex still holds more than a 50 percent market share in Russian online search

Earlier this year, Yandex had complained to the country's competition authority that cellphone manufacturers were not able to include the company's rival digital offerings in the Android operating system. After the complaint, the regulator began investigating whether Google unfairly bundled its own services, like digital maps, in its Android software. Google may appeal the ruling. If the decision holds, the company may be forced to change what services it includes in its Android operating system as part of its efforts to comply with Russia's competition rules, or face potential fines. "Russia is the first jurisdiction to have officially recognized these practices as anticompetitive," Yandex said in a statement, in reference to Google's favoring of its own services in Android over those of rivals.

Update: The US Federal Trade Comission (FTC) has started its own preliminary investigation into Google's requiring prominent placement of its own apps on Android handsets.
Reply 5 comments

I don't get it? (Score: 1)

by kwerle@pipedot.org on 2015-09-24 15:00 (#NEES)

Help me out. Google doesn't ship phones, right? And Android is open source, so whoever ships phones could use Yandex if the wanted, couldn't they?

Re: I don't get it? (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2015-09-24 16:11 (#NEP0)

I saw a brief mention on another site about some problem with the agreements between Google and the manufacturers. But there really isn't much detail about this ruling anywhere.

Re: I don't get it? (Score: 0)

by Anonymous Coward on 2015-09-25 06:45 (#NGNC)

As I remember it, the vendor can't install appstore unless the device conforms to Google's standards. This includes installing a lot of things Google wants them to. I don't know whether Google Maps is one of the mandatory packages. I think only the base OS is open source, linux and the java libraries. The rest, like the keyboard app etc. are closed source.

Wait, What? (Score: 1, Interesting)

by Anonymous Coward on 2015-09-25 15:20 (#NJ36)

So a competitor to Google with a national market share >50% accused Google via phone makers of being anti-competitve. It's like Microsoft complaining that Apple doesn't pre-install Windows on Macs.

However, Apple does allow the end user to install Windows on a Mac, and Google allows you to side load apps and app stores. Yandex could pull an Amazon, fork and install their own apps. Perhaps they have seen how well that worked for Amazon and thought they would go complain to Mother Russia that an evil American company wasn't playing fair.

US FTC also (Score: 1)

by evilviper@pipedot.org on 2015-09-26 19:49 (#NNC5)

Updated article with recent news the US FTC is investigating Google as well.