The FAS Russia received allegations of violation of the antimonopoly legislation by Yandex LLC. The company's actions in the Internet search market contain signs of abuse of dominance.
Yandex LLC provides
services of the Yandex group with preferential opportunities for
promoting (attracting users' attention) services in the Yandex search
engine, which leads to the creation of discriminatory conditions for
activity in adjacent markets.
FAS Russia issued a warning to Yandex
to eliminate violations. The organization must provide equal conditions
for the demonstration of services on the search engine pages, including
for market participants - competitors of the Yandex group.
The company must stop giving priority to its services in search results.
Yandex
must fully disclose to all companies its mechanism for promoting links
and attracting users' attention, including with the help of "sorcerers".
Third-party companies should be given the opportunity to use such
instruments.
Search results must be formed according to uniform
ranking rules, "on equal terms, preventing the preferential
demonstration of services included in Yandex LLC.
All these
requirements must be met within a month. During this period, Yandex must
inform the FAS about the progress of their implementation every ten
days. If the company does not act in accordance with the warning, a case
can be brought against it.
According to RBC news, representatives
from Yandex said that they disagree with the FAS warning. "Some of the
prescription requirements have already been implemented in the search
engine, but we consider some important parts of it to be incorrect.
Fulfilment of all of the above requirements will worsen the quality of
search for the user, which means the position of Yandex's search in the
market compared to its competitors," the company believes.
