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Google Found Guilty of "Abusing Dominant Market Position" In Russia
An anonymous reader writes: Russia's anti-monopoly regulator has ruled that Google has violated Russian antitrust laws by requiring that manufacturers pre-install its services on their devices. Stock in Russian search firm Yandex has soared since the ruling. Cnet reports: "The agency, Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service, has 10 days to issue a full ruling. In the ruling, Russia can outline adjustments to Google's agreements with mobile device manufacturers, according to the translated statement. But while Google was found guilty of market abuses, a Russian antitrust regulator told The Wall Street Journal the Mountain View, California-based company wasn't found guilty of 'unfair competition practices.' 'We haven't yet received the ruling,' a Google spokeswoman said in an emailed statement. 'When we do, we will study it and determine our next steps.'"
... for appropriate bribery.
1) Micky Mouse
2) your mom
3) Someone from Russia. (The country whose laws Google broke.)
You're assuming they broke the law. It's antitrust, which means there's so much wiggle room in it the judges can decide whatever they want. And it's Russia, so everything is about who bribed whom.
There's a lot of competition in the Smartphone O/S space. While every operator builds something of its own structural monopoly, you can still pick a windows phone or an apple phone or even a blackberry.
So antitrust complaints against google are pretty much bullshit.
Yes they are more popular and they have special connections in the Kremlin which is where this decision comes from. What they want is for the government to force Goolge to let them install some of Google's applications that they don't have equivalents for while allowing them to replace what they can. I would suggest Google tell them to go fuck themselves and in the process Android disappears from Russia and Yandex is destroyed.
See that's the kicker in this whole thing, Yandex is entirely dependent on Google to provide the OS, update it and provide the store. They want to replace certain parts with their apps. But Google does not allow their software to be loaded unless ALL of it is loaded and frankly there isn't a thing wrong with that. Android is free to use and Yandex can take it and do whatever they want with it. But that would mean hiring developers and engineers and doing the real heavy lifting that Google does and it would mean forgoing the Google servers entirely, including Google play.
Yandex wants the best of both worlds. One where they can utilize Googles software but replace all the profitable bits with their own. Basically a world where Google subsidizes them. Good luck with that. I doubt Russia is even a top 10 market for Google and they'd rather walk away from the market than empower a competitor. Then all the Russians will have left is Apple and Blackberry and Yandex will be proper fucked. I suspect this will work out as well as it did for the Spanish news publishers when Google just pulled out of the market rather than support their competitors.
All these companies just keep trying to slay the golden goose.
Russia has banned food imports from the EU. They siezed a load a few months ago and put on a big public show on national TV of destroying it as an illegal import. The official line is that they couldn't trust in the safety of the illegally imported cheese because smugglers might not refrigerate it properly or keep the correct paperwork to track origin, but no-one buys that excuse, so there are some level of quiet muttering in Russia about the incident - mostly because, thanks to the food import ban, food prices have shot up at a time when their economy is already seriously struggling.