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The Moscow Times reports that Russian Internet giant Yandex has filed a complaint against Google at the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service, alleging that its rival has an unfair advantage because it insists that Android device manufacturers set Google as the default search engine if they want to bundle Google Play. Google has yet to respond. From the article:
The regulator now has one month to consider the request from Yandex, Russia's top search engine and provider of a range of digital services, such as Yandex.Maps and Yandex.Music, a music streaming service.
Yandex's head of product distribution, Yury Vecher, wrote on news website Slon.ru that the company lodged the complaint after finding it impossible to have its services — which mirror those of Google's, but are often better tailored for the Russian market — installed on Android devices sold in Russia.
Yandex seems to want Google to unbundle Google search and its native apps from Android in the same way that EU regulators had forced Microsoft to unbundle Internet Explorer from Windows. There are also similar antitrust efforts by Microsoft and others concentrating on the EU.
Other coverage of the complaint is available from the BBC, TechCrunch, and Bloomberg.
(Score: 1) by Cheburator2 on Friday February 20 2015, @06:38PM
Do you have sources for such accusations? They sound a little bit made-up.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Friday February 20 2015, @07:56PM
Plenty. I've been following Yandex for several years. (I even have an email account and a yandex drive account there).
(I have no illusion of privacy on Yandex, it has very close ties to the Russian government.)
http://siliconangle.com/blog/2012/10/01/yandex-rips-off-googles-tech-then-declares-war/ [siliconangle.com]
In fact the people from Yandex so aggressively try to downplay this fact that they have a huge stack of slides that any Journalist that visits their office has to sit through showing that they invented the search engine sometime before world war II.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Cheburator2 on Saturday February 21 2015, @10:46PM
Well, forking open source browser is not called "stealing", and even copying some design is not stealing. All major software companies do it. Mac OS => Windows, iOS => Android, Google Maps => Apple Maps, Windows Phone & Android => newer iOS versions. And yes, Yandex search was there before Google, and yes, they hire the most brilliant minds in Russia, but that doesn't matter. They don't "steal" anymore than Google, Microsoft & Apple.