Google has been dealt a blow in its ongoing battle with European regulators as the Internet giant has lost its anti-monopoly appeal in Russia.
The Moscow Arbitration court has upheld a previous ruling from the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) that found Google had abused its dominant market position and broken anti-competition legislation. The crux of the issue is that Google has hindered the ability to create competing services on Android by forcing manufacturers to bundle Google apps on the phones, including Google Search and Google Play.
Local competitor Yandex had made the original complaint to the FAS around Google’s purported insistence that Android phones must come with certain Google apps out of the box, ones that can’t be uninstalled either. A Yandex spokesperson told VentureBeat:
“After careful consideration of all the facts in the case against Google’s anticompetitive practices, the court has upheld FAS’s judgement. We are satisfied with the court’s decision to uphold FAS’s judgement in the case against Google.”
Google will now have to rewrite its contracts with manufacturers and pay a fine, as per the initial FAS ruling. The court-issued statement reads:
“In course of the case proceedings, the Commission of the FAS Russia found that Google provided mobile devices manufacturers with Google play app store for pre-installation on Android OS mobile devices adopted for the Russian Federation. Conditions of app store provision include obligatory pre-installation of Google apps as well as its searching engine and their obligatory location on the main screen of a mobile device.
Google actions led to prohibition of pre-installation of apps of other producers.”
While the news from Russia will no doubt be greeted with dismay by Google, it could signal the start of Android’s great unbundling across the broader European region. Indeed, Google’s Android woes extend across into the European Union (E.U.) with the European Commission (E.C.) also probing Android on similar grounds to that of Russia.
At the time it announced this probe last year, the Commission said it will assess:
If, by entering into anticompetitive agreements and/or by abusing a possible dominant position, Google has illegally hindered the development and market access of rival mobile operating systems, mobile communication applications and services in the European Economic Area (EEA).
Elsewhere, Europe is also accusing Google of using its dominance to bias search results, after a four-year investigation. And a number of countries are pushing the U.S. company to pay more tax, including the U.K.
While Russia’s ruling won’t necessarily have any bearing on the broader E.U. findings, Google and its parent company Alphabet are increasingly concerned at events across the Atlantic and have been investing heavily in lobbying efforts.