Russia’s Yandex reaches settlement in search engine dispute

Russian tech large Yandex on Wednesday mentioned it had reached a settlement settlement in a contest regulation dispute over its search engine outcomes with Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) and a consortium of IT firms.

The FAS instructed Yandex final February that it had created unequal market situations for basic on-line search providers, that it was preferentially selling its personal merchandise and requested it to cease. Yandex on the time mentioned it was able to defend its place.

Nasdaq-listed Yandex mentioned the settlement confirmed that it had complied with all necessities of the warning, terminated the case with none fines, and set forth sure extra obligations for Yandex to assist competitors, together with sharing data with the FAS.

In addition, Yandex mentioned it will set up a joint programme to assist Russian know-how firms in selling their services and products, contributing 1.5 billion roubles ($19.6 million) to the Russian Fund for the Development of Information Technologies.

The FAS mentioned in an announcement the settlement was permitted by Moscow’s Arbitration Court in any case events had signed.

Around 20 Russian web firms signed an open letter final yr supporting the FAS’ efforts. In it, they accused Yandex of abusing its dominant market place and urged it to determine a degree taking part in discipline for honest competitors in on-line searches.

The FAS later introduced an antitrust case towards Yandex, saying it will examine attainable anti-competitive practices and assess their penalties.

The dispute centred round enriched search, which supplies customers extra detailed outcomes on searches for issues like occasions and recipes.

Yandex has mentioned it makes use of the worldwide observe of enriched search outcomes to boost the person expertise and that over 30,000 firms use its enriched search know-how free of charge. Reuters