The violation of the Russian legislation is fraught with the loss of the BRICS market for Google, Head of Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) Igor Artemyev said in an interview aired by NTV channel on Monday.
“What we can do further will be very sensitive for Google. And if we set certain precedents in Russia for the failure to execute the Russian courts’ (judgements) and, say, the authorities of India or other BRICS countries, where around 50% of respective services consumed internationally are focused, follow track I think they (Google) can lose the markets or be seriously restricted to use their products,” he said.
According to Artemyev, he hopes that “the story with Google will end up” by the issuance of instruction for Apple based on the results of the FAS investigation on suspicion of price coordination regarding iPhone 6s and 6s Plus.
In September 2015, the Federal Antimonopoly Service ruled that Google Inc. and Google Ireland Ltd. had breached the competition protection law under the complaint of the Russian Internet company Yandex. According to the regulator, Google obliged manufacturers of Android OS-based devices to pre-install its applications together with Android platform. FAS said that Google’s policy restricted installation of applications by other developers. Google did not agree with the ruling and appealed to the court.
On September 29, Google started to notify Russian users of the Android devices about the possibility of changing the search engine, deactivating pre-installed applications, installing third-party services (including third-party search engines and widgets, email, calendar, and other services) and changing position of application icons. Google noted it continues to work with FAS on technical execution of their orders.
Google lodged an appeal against the court judgement in favor of FAS regarding the case on abusing dominant position.
On November 1, the Moscow Arbitration Court adjourned the case of the FAS fine in the amount of 438.1 mln rubles ($6.6 mln) for Google’s abuse of the dominating position on the online application stores market in Russia until December 8.