On January 19, the Moscow Arbitration Court approved the document after it was signed by all parties of the SERP features case.
Yandex recognized the validity of the warning issued by FAS and complied with its provisions.
The applicants (Avito, Wildberries, profi.ru, 2GIS, and other companies) confirmed that the company had taken all necessary steps to eliminate discriminatory treatment in its search engine.
"Usually, business disagreements do not bring anything good to either side of a conflict. However, the dispute about SERP features showed that a constructive dialogue with the regulator and the industry, as well as a willingness to listen to each other can produce really breakthrough results," said Yandex Search Director Andrei Styskin.
According to him, the result of this dialogue were new formats of work with partners: the company managed to integrate more than 50 different Internet services in the search. As a result of the interaction of the companies participating in the antimonopoly case, the policy, conditions and technical requirements for the integration of partners into the Yandex search engine have been published. Their requirements are open and uniform for all market participants, including the company's own services.
Moreover, FAS will monitor the execution of the settlement agreement and regularly analyze the work of the search engine. Yandex also undertakes to provide information for such monitoring to the authority on a regular basis. An independent audit of the impartiality of ranking and displaying data in search results will be conducted annually.
The purpose of FAS is to protect competition, to create non-discriminatory business conditions for all market players, stressed the head of the FAS, Maxim Shaskolsky.
“The settlement agreement takes into account the position of each interested party. This document also confirms the possibility of self-regulation of digital markets in Russia. We managed not to delay the trial for years, but to jointly implement mechanisms that allow all market players to develop successfully”, said Head of the FAS Russia.
In 2020 the FAS initiated a case against Yandex on the grounds of violation of antimonopoly law. Yandex favored the services of Yandex corporate group in its own search engine.
Source: FAS, Yandex Blog
