Stop, fall: Yandex has stabilized its share in the Russian search market

A Morgan Stanley report showed that in 2015, Yandex had stopped reducing its share of the Internet search market. Despite strong competition with Google for users' computers and tablets, the Russian company stabilized its share due to this segment.

However, in 2016, analysts predict that the fall of Yandex will continue. According to them, it will be quite small - only by 0.5 pp. But in 2017, the share of Yandex will drop to 55% if the situation does not change amid the proceedings between Google and the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS), noted in Morgan Stanley.

Until the middle of last year, the share of Yandex search in runet was decreasing. This was due to the growing popularity of products one way or another connected with Google. In the summer, the share of Yandex stabilized at 57%. According to Liveinternet, in December 2015, Yandex accounted for 57.2% of search traffic in runet. In 2014, its share was 59.3%. Google did not waste time and during the same period increased its share by 3.4 pp to 35.5%.
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According to Euroset, in the first nine months of 2015, the share of Android devices in the total number of smartphones sold in Russia was 86%. In December 2015, according to Liveinternet, 42.9% of Russian users of mobile devices and desktops went to the Internet from Android devices.

On computers and other devices running the family of Windows operating systems from Microsoft accounted for 39.7%, on the iPhone and iPad - 14.2%. For the first time, Android bypassed Windows by share in August 2015, and since then the gap between them has widened.

In March 2015, Yandex filed a complaint against Google with the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS). According to the Russian company, Google is forcing device manufacturers running Android to abandon the pre-installation of applications competing with Google, including Yandex. Indirectly, this was confirmed by the fact that three manufacturers of mobile devices - Fly, Explay and Prestigio - terminated their agreements with Yandex about the pre-installation of its services.

On September 14, the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service declared Google a violator of anti-monopoly law.

According to the legislation of the Russian Federation, the violator of the law “On protection of competition” is threatened with a so-called negotiable fine. The amount of the fine may amount to 7% of the turnover of the online store of Google Play applications in Russia. This was announced by the head of the FAS Igor Artemyev.

FAS demanded from Google to eliminate the violation of the law "On Protection of Competition" until November 18. On November 9, Megamind wrote that FAS went to meet Google and extended the period by a month during which the company must eliminate the violation of the law.

However, the company filed a complaint with the FAS decision, which the Moscow Arbitration Court will consider only on January 25.

Yandex was the claimant in this case and he managed to win his complaint to the FAS, says Vitaly Dianov, head of anti-monopoly practice at Goltsblat BLP. It is in his interest to receive the status of a third party and to do everything in his power to ensure that this decision stands in court.

Representatives of Yandex believe that its share in the search has stabilized due to qualitative changes. “The search base has grown several times, now we see more documents online than a year ago,” said his press officer. The company improved and expanded the mechanisms of machine learning of search algorithms, strengthened the fight against unfair optimization of search results (when a link for money is placed at a higher position). In addition, the share of the search was influenced by the growing popularity of Yandex. Browser. According to Morgan Stanly, in 2015 compared to 2014, the share of the browser increased from 14% to 16% on desktop computers, from 15% to 22% on laptops and from 13% to 17% on smartphones. The partnership with Microsoft and Firefox has also borne fruit, a Yandex representative added.

"Megamind" wrote that immediately after the decision of the Federal Antimonopoly Service in the case of Google, representatives of the company "Yandex" began to negotiate with manufacturers of mobile devices to pre-install their applications. "We have been in contact with them before, but in a sense, we had our hands tied," said Alexander Shulgin, CEO of Yandex.

Count on the growth of the share of "Yandex" this year is not worth it, told "Vedomosti" analyst investment bank "Opening Capital" Alexander Vengranovich, but most likely it will remain stable: Google, while there is a lawsuit with the FAS, will not make sharp movements to increase share, while “Yandex” no longer has the tools to seriously change the situation.