Google Found Guilty of ‘Abusing Dominant Market Position’ in Russia

GNU Emacs also abuses its dominant position in the editor market by shipping all this bundled Lisp code.<p>Over twenty years ago I was a making killing, hand over fist, selling a Usenet news reading add-on for Emacs. Then those anti-trust bastards included some Lisp code which does that, and I went down the tubes.<p>I mean, what gave them the <i>right</i>, you know?<p>It&#x27;s as if not only did they disrespect my sense of entitlement, but it&#x27;s like they didn&#x27;t even <i>see</i> it, in spite of its monstrous size.

The crux of the article:<p><pre><code> Google said in February that device makers “are free to install the apps they choose, and consumers always have complete control over the apps on their devices.” Several device manufacturers that pre-install Yandex apps notified the company in 2014 that they were “no longer able to pre-install Yandex services,” such as Yandex’s search and map apps on Google’s Android devices, prompting Yandex to make a complaint to the antitrust authorities. [1] </code></pre> From an earlier article:<p><pre><code> In order to install Google Play on their devices, device manufacturers are required to preinstall the entire suite of Google GMS services, and set Google as the default search. In addition to that, device manufacturers are increasingly prohibited from installing any services from Google’s competitors on their devices… The openness of Android is now in a thing of the past.” [Yandex&#x27; claim] [2] </code></pre> [1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wsj.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;google-found-guilty-of-abusing-dominant-market-position-in-russia-1442250025" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.wsj.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;google-found-guilty-of-abusing-d...</a><p>[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;02&#x2F;18&#x2F;yandex-google-russia-antitrust&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;02&#x2F;18&#x2F;yandex-google-russia-antitr...</a>

But really, it&#x27;s &#x27;Abusing Dominant Market Position without Permission.&#x27;

Google seems to be singled out and especially targeted by these antitrust allegation and investigations, I mean in the larger sense not just here where it&#x27;s mostly a protectionist outcome as the fact that they technically don&#x27;t have a &quot;dominant market position&quot; at ~50% market share is the least of it.<p>I&#x27;m curious How a ruling like that gels with the fact that on an iPhone (the other half of the market) all services and apps are dictated by Apple and can not be altered, while on Android not only they can be but the whole OS is free, Yandex could have commissioned their own hardware like many others do and they curiously haven&#x27;t complained about Apple.<p>Same goes for the search allegation,the argument there is that Google should feature results from other search engines on <i>their own site</i>! Which is mind Boggling, no one is convinced Facebook or twitter or anyone should include content from other website but somehow Google is different. Google isn&#x27;t the network layer that one must go through it to interact with the web, they are no &quot;gatekeeper&quot; not technically or metaphorically yet somehow politicians are convinced they are.<p>This seems like field distortion to me that somehow regulator were sold on to (even excluding this Russian example).

Previous discussion, from when the probe began: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=9068334" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=9068334</a>

The jurisdiction bias aside, Google has been indeed busy deploying an array of devices to disguise the AdWords monopoly behind an alphabetical soup of projects and products. The more your hear about self-driving cars, the less attention you&#x27;re paying to Paid Clicks market share.

Should we take what the Russian goverment says at face value, or is this part of a trend in Russian policy to turn away from the West? These are the same guys trying to ban Reddit and Wikipedia.

Let&#x27;s see Yandex can indeed fork Android and deliver a device in Russia without Google apps..what anitrust issue here? Maybe Yandex anticompetitive desires?

Can someone post a non-paywall link?

People acting like this is a &quot;Russia against the West&quot; thing are ignoring the fact that the EU, India, Brazil, and others are all conducting similar investigations, which are likely to have the same result.<p>And the US even found merit to investigate Google, before quietly burying the case.

Ten to one that this is a backdoor geopolitical jab at the US.<p>The Russians are always trying to create and solidify a US-free sphere of influence. That goes for US companies, US NGOs, you name it.

And how much has &#x27;Yandex&#x27;, whatever that is, contributed to Android? Android exists and is relatively free (as in beer and speech) because it drives traffic to Google. If you don&#x27;t like it, write your own mobile operating system from scratch (good luck).<p>Edit: actually, they&#x27;d only need their own app store if I understand the terms correctly.

Google is not even the most popular search engine in Russia. This is why Russian courts are commonly considered a running joke.

Whatever suspicions I have about the process by which this decision was made, it seems in principle like a sane ruling that&#x27;ll improve the openness of the Android platform.

Filled in February 2015 and ruled in September 2015? Russian justice is very fast, and the results are really shocking and surprising

It&#x27;s time for Google to close Android and quit dealing with this bullshit. If you want Android, buy a Google phone with Google Apps and Services and get all your updates directly from Google in a timely manner.