In 2020, a number of companies filed a complaint with the Federal Antimonopoly Service that Yandex was abusing its dominant position in the search results, primarily offering its own services in the search in an expanded form.
According to an Interfax source, Yandex concluded a settlement with Avito, Wildberries, profi.ru, 2GIS, and other companies. There is no agreement with FAS yet. According to the agency, the company will pay the money to the Russian Information Technology Development Fund after the court approves the agreement. The search engine has also developed a policy of unbiased search results with a search ranking mechanism. The company's partners will be able to get the same places where Yandex showed its own services.
In the summer of 2019, Avito, cian.ru, ivi, profi.ru, 2GIS complained that Yandex was taking customers to their services with the help of so-called SERP features. These are output modules; when at the top of the results page, they give not a line on request but a ready-made piece of content. So does Google. Only in Yandex, this widget was not available to competitors of its services.
The request "buy a car" resulted in blocks with the content of the Yandex service without any other options. Thus, the search engine blocked the ability for users to get to the offers of competitors.
Yandex argued that "enriched responses" is a common global practice of Internet companies that works primarily in the interests of consumers. The search engine also claimed that up to 30,000 other companies use its SERP features.
The FAS agreed with the applicant companies and demanded that Yandex stop the violations and then filed an antitrust case against it in April.
In May, Yandex published lengthy explanations on SERP features for the company's partners and changes in the rules for their use. But in an antitrust case a month later, the companies that complained about Yandex's practices said problems persisted.
