Russia’s anti-monopoly watchdog fined Google Rbs438m ($6.8m) on Thursday for violating competition regulations over its Android software on mobile phones.
The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service ruled last year that Google had illegally forced smartphone manufacturers to bar certain rival apps and pre-install Google products on their devices, giving apps like the Play store, its maps, and its search engine prominence over those from other manufacturers.
The fine is between 1 and 15 per cent of Google’s Russian earnings from mobile sales in 2014, the agency said in a statement, declining to be more specific.
The agency brought the case against the California-based company last year on the basis of a complaint from Yandex, Google’s biggest Russian rival. After siding against Google in October, the agency ordered it to make default Android settings less dependent on Google products and inform existing Android users that they could move, delete, or unsubscripted from various Google services.
Google lost an initial appeal against the case in an arbitration hearing in March. A further hearing is set for next week. The European Commission began formally investigating Google on similar grounds last year.
The decision comes after the agency announced a new investigation on Monday into Apple’s practices. It accuses it of colluding with Russian resellers to fix prices for the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus.
Russia has also introduced a number of restrictive laws regulating the INTERNET in recent years. A law passed in 2014 mandates all foreign Internet companies to physically store Russian citizens’ personal data in Russia.
Google has said it will comply with the law, but the effort has fizzled after other leading western companies, such as Twitter, dragged their feet.
In June, Russia passed a sweeping anti-terrorism law demanding that operators make all communications and metadata available to the secret services, and called on messaging services to install cryptographic back doors.
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