“Google” abuses its dominant position on the market of pre-installed application stores in “Android” OS

The FAS Commission arrived to that conclusion on 14th September 2015, based on investigating the case against “Google Inc, Google Ireland” Ltd., “Google” Ltd.

FAS found that “Google Inc. Google Ireland Ltd.” (further on referred to as “Google”) violated Part 1 Article 10 of the Federal Law “On Protection of Competition” (abusing market dominance).

On 20 February 2015, FAS opened a case against “Google Inc. Google Ireland” Ltd., “Google” Ltd. upon elements of violating the antimonopoly law due to a complaint from “Yandex” on anticompetitive actions.

Investigating the case, the FAS Commission established that “Google” violated the law by giving “Google Play” app store controlled by “Android” Operational System to the counteragents – vendors of mobile devices to pre-install it on the mobile devices to be sold in the Russian Federation under the conditions including mandatory pre-installment of “Google” applications and “Google” search system and mandatory priority positioning on the device home page.

Actions undertaken by “Google” also resulted in prohibiting pre-installment of applications of vendors.

Having considered all case circumstances, FAS decided to terminate the case against “Google” Ltd., and terminate the proceedings against “Google” allegedly violating Part 1 Article 14 of the Federal Law “On Protection of Competition” (unfair competition) due to absence of the violations of the antimonopoly law in the actions analyzed by the Commission.

According to Deputy Head of FAS, Alexei Dotsenko, FAS shall draft a full decision within ten working days and issue a determination to “Google” to stop abusing dominance and exercise actions aimed at supporting competition. “In particular, FAS can request to adjust contracts with vendors of mobile devices, excluding such Clauses from the agreements that restrict installing applications and services of other developers of such devices”, concluded Mr. Dotsenko.

Violations of Article 10 of the Federal Law “On Protection of Competition” constitute the grounds for imposing fines under Article 14.31 of the Code of the Russian Federation on Administrative Violations: from one hundredth to fifteen hundredths of the income gained by the violator from selling goods (works, services) on the market where the violation was committed.

The administrative proceedings may start in October 2015.