"Yandex" testified about the monopoly of Google in the market for Android devices

“Yandex” considers Google its main competitor. It is easy to predict what testimony was given by representatives of a Russian company at the request of the European Commission as part of an antitrust investigation about the dominance of Google on Android devices. Admittedly, the European Commission chooses the witnesses correctly.

Antitrust investigation on Android is separate from the investigation into the position of Google in the search engine market. The main complaint about Google on Android is the “all or nothing” policy in the delivery of a suite of proprietary programs and software interfaces of Google Mobile Services (GMS) and their priority position relative to the rest of the software.

The GMS kit includes proprietary software from the Play Store, Google Maps, Gmail, Drive, YouTube, Hangouts, and Chrome. Google declares them as free software, but at the same time it requires money for the “activation” of the package from each manufacturer of Android devices. The amount of payment depends on the volume of production (about $ 0.75 per device).

Worst of all, Google is systematically transferring more and more functionality from the open source code base of the Android Open Source Platform (AOSP) to the proprietary GMS , for which it has been repeatedly criticized.
')


Simultaneously with the expansion of the functionality of the GMS, Google offers more and more advanced GMS API for the work of third-party applications.

The only argument in favor of this behavior could be the fight against the fragmentation of the Android platform, but in general this does not correspond to the principle of “don't be evil”. At least in terms of manufacturers of Android devices. And from the point of view of “Yandex”.

According to the sources of GigaOM, the European Commission invited Yandex because the Russian company has its own catalog of applications and services, which is trying to compete with Google (this is Yandex.Kit). As Google “tightens its screws” more and more, it becomes more and more difficult.

They even say that Google has put pressure on major manufacturers of smartphones that operate in the Russian market, so that they refuse to install the Yandex search by default, as well as Yandex applications in general. For example, a representative of Yandex, Vladimir Isaev, said that one of the last such examples was an attempt to cooperate with Yandex with Explay.

All these arguments, "Yandex" may have expressed in a written response to the request of the European Commission.

The European Commission sent a request for compulsory information to Yandex in July of this year, company spokeswoman Asya Melkumova told RBC. “We provided the materials requested by the European Commission - about cooperation with manufacturers on pre-installing services on their mobile devices,” she said and added that Yandex faces difficulties when trying to negotiate with manufacturers about pre-installing searches and applications on devices Android platform, as well as when distributing Yandex.Kita. Many manufacturers seek to cooperate with Yandex, but due to limitations in contracts with Google, partnership opportunities are limited.