Russia's national regulator has fined Google 438 million rubles, an amount equivalent to $6.8 million, in connection to an antitrust investigation concerning tablets and mobile phones.
The investigation into Google started last year when Yandex, described as the Google of Russia, filed a complaint to the country's Federal Antimonopoly Service.
In September 2015, the FAS said that the policies of Google on preinstalled Android applications on mobile devices had broken competition rules in Russia. Original equipment manufacturers have signed agreements with Google to access Google Play Services, with the trade-off that certain Google apps are required to be preinstalled on devices and set to default.
Yandex took issue with the set-up, as it is also looking to be given prominent placement on Android mobile devices. Google was ordered to loosen its policies on its mobile operating system, which would allow local companies such as Yandex to also preinstall apps onto Android devices being sold in the country.
It was reported that Google might receive a fine of up to 15 percent of its earnings in Russia from the pre-installed apps. The fine has now been determined to be in the amount of the aforementioned $6.8 million, based on 15 percent of the company's domestic sales from the online Google Play store from way back in 2014.
The amount is nothing but a small scratch to Google, which reported annual revenues of $75 billion. However, the company said that it is currently evaluating the decision that was handed down by the FAS, and will be deciding on its next step.
Google has the ability to simply pay the fine, but doing so would mean that the company is conceding the fact that its policies for Android are illegal. Google will surely not want to do that, especially without first lodging an appeal against the decision. As such, the investigations and legal challenges will likely not end with this decision by the FAS.
Google does not have a major presence in Russia, but the company's antitrust issues in Europe have recently been piling up. Last month, the European Commission slapped Google with a third round of antitrust charges over the company's alleged abuse of its market dominance in the search engine market.
Margrethe Vestager, the competition commissioner for the European Union, admitted that Google has put forward many innovations that have changed the lives of consumers. However, this does not give the company the right to deny other companies the opportunity to innovate and compete, Vestager added.
