Russia’s antitrust regulator has reportedly called out for an antitrust investigation into Google Inc. on Friday over alleged violation of anti-monopoly law.
According to Reuters, the probe follows a complaint from Russia’s biggest search engine Yandex, which has accused Google of forcing smartphone makers to preinstall certain Google apps and set Google as the default search application.
“We have studied the complaint and decided to open proceedings regarding the violation of anti-monopoly regulation,” a spokeswoman for the FAS competition watchdog said without giving any further explanation.
Yandex claims that Google locks device makers into its own app store as it mandates device makers to preinstall the entire suite of Google Mobile Services, including Google Search, Google Maps, Gmail and other Google apps in order to install Google Play. The Russian search engine also alleges that Google blocks rival apps from being installed on Android devices.
“We believe that device manufacturers should have a choice as to which search provider to set as the default or which services to have preinstalled on the device,” said Yandex spokesperson Ochir Mandzhikov.
“Google should not prevent manufacturers from preinstalling competitor apps. This is why we are talking about the need to unbundle Google’s Android operating system from Google Search and its other end-user services.”
A Google spokeswoman in Russia denied anti-competitive behavior.
“Device makers are free to install the apps they choose and consumers always have complete control over the apps on their devices,” Google said in a statement emailed to Reuters.
Yandex is yet to comment on the launch of the probe.
Google are a disgrace, they have thousands of malicious apps on Google Play and yet they warn against installing apps from any other app market. Android users also have to make a change to their phones to install any apps outside of Google Play. How Google can deny anti-competitive behavior is laughable!! Go on Yandex, fight and I hope you win to stop Google in its tracks and to create a fair marketplace for all Android developers.
We want multiple search engine options as offered by Firefox these days.