FAS fined Google for 500 thousand rubles

The Federal Antimonopoly Service attracted Google Inc and Google Ireland Limited to administrative responsibility for failure to fulfill the order and set a fine in the amount of 500 thousand rubles. This was reported by Interfax with reference to the press service of the department.

Prior to this, the FAS refused to execute the execution of the order to eliminate the violation of competition in the market of pre -installed mobile applications in Russia.

Last February, it became known that the Yandex Internet search engine submitted a statement to the FAS with a request to verify Google for violations of Russian antimonopoly legislation . "The openness of Android has remained in the past. The basis of the Android devices was a closed package of Google Mobile Services (GMS), which includes Google Play and a number of other components. The dependence of manufacturers of smartphones and developers on GMS has grown so that Google may dictate the rules of the game. If manufacturers do not agree to promote their devices Google services, in particular, set Google search by default, they can lose access to the components of the Android platform, on which the success of their smartphones depends, ”Yandex said.

On February 20, 2015, the head of the FAS Igor Artemyev, during a government hour in the State Duma, said that his department opened a case against Google about the violation of antimonopoly legislation. "We have aroused a lot of things against various companies. Here is the last thing that we have aroused literally today, against Google, for example, a very famous company," Artemyev said.

On October 5, the FAS ordered Google until November 18 to change the contracts concluded with mobile manufacturers andeliminate other violations . In particular, Google was supposed to inform users of Android devices that they could deactivate pre-installed applications, change the default search for Google Chrome, as well as set the search widget and services similar to a GSM service package from Google itself.

The corporation refused to comply with these requirements and appealed the decision of the FAS in court. Initially, the FAS suggested that the fine could be limited by 1 percent of Google's income from the Applications store in Russia. However, after the corporation went to court, Artemyev said that the fine could grow up to 7 percent.

On March 14, the Moscow Arbitration Court rejected the Google claim to the FAS. The next day,the FAS opened the case under part 2 of Article 14.31 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (abuse of the dominant position in the commodity market). The agency found that Google actions "on connecting in a single packet of pre -installed applications of the Google Play and other applications application store" contain signs of violation of part 1 of Article 10 of the Law on Protection of Competition.

On August 11, the FAS found Google guilty, imposed a fine on a company of 438 million rubles and ordered to eliminate violations.

In August, Google filed a lawsuit against the Moscow Arbitration Court of the Federal Antimonopoly Service , challenging this decision of the department. The consideration of the claim has not yet been completed.