FAS, Yandex & Other Internet Companies Agree Settlement

The Moscow Arbitration Court approved the document on the settlement agreement in the antimonopoly case against Yandex after signing by all interested parties.

Yandex recognized the validity of the warning issued by the FAS and complied with its provisions. The applicants confirmed that the company had taken all necessary steps to eliminate discriminatory conditions in its own search engine. FAS Russia announced the termination of the antimonopoly case against Yandex.

Maxim Shaskolsky, the Head of the FAS Russia has been quoted saying:

The goal of FAS Russia is to protect competition in the market, create non-discriminatory conditions for all its participants. The settlement agreement takes into account the position of each interested party. This document is also a confirmation of the possibility of self-regulation of digital markets in Russia. We managed not to drag out the court proceedings for years, but by joint efforts to implement mechanisms that allow all market participants to develop successfully.

In addition to the completion of the antimonopoly case, this dialogue resulted in new formats for Yandex to work with partners – the company managed to integrate more than 50 different Internet services into search.

Also this week, Yandex published the policy, terms, and technical requirements for integrating partners into search results, which was also the result of several months of close interaction with applicant Internet companies.

In addition, Yandex announced that they would conduct an annual independent audit of the impartiality of search rankings, as well as provide the FAS with the information necessary for regular monitoring of the search engine.

The company will also contribute 1.5 billion rubles to the Russian Information Technology Development Fund. The new program will provide grants to small IT companies to promote their products and services online.

Andrey Styskin, the Director of the Search Business Group, Advertising and Cloud Services has been quoted with the following comment:

Thanks to the Federal Antimonopoly Service, the story ended well for all participants: the Russian Internet industry has taken an important step towards maturity and the ability to independently resolve its issues through self-regulation. The main result of this story was another step in the development of the Internet for users.

 

Dan Taylor
Dan Taylor is an experienced SEO consultant and has worked with brands and companies on optimizing for Russia (and Yandex) for a number of years. Winner of the inaugural 2018 TechSEO Boost competition, webmaster at HreflangChecker.com and Sloth.Cloud, and founder of RussianSearchNews.com.