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The Federal Antimonopoly Service, Yandex and the applicants in the case of “sorcerers” entered into a settlement agreement, informs regulator. The agreement was approved by the Moscow Arbitration Court, and the FAS terminated the corresponding antimonopoly case.
Yandex recognized the validity of the warning issued by the FAS and complied with its provisions. In particular, as a result of the interaction of the companies participating in the antimonopoly case, the policy, conditions and technical requirements for integrating partners into the Yandex search engine were published. Their requirements are open and uniform for all market participants, including the company’s own services.
In addition, the antimonopoly service will monitor the execution of the settlement agreement, as well as regularly analyze the correctness of the company’s search engine. Information for such monitoring “Yandex” also undertakes to regularly provide the agency. An independent audit of the unbiasedness of the ranking and display of data in search results will be conducted annually, the FAS said in a statement.
The applicants confirmed that the company had taken all necessary actions aimed at eliminating discriminatory conditions in its own search engine.
Under the terms of the agreement, Yandex will contribute 1.5 billion rubles to the Russian Fund for the Development of Information Technologies. This money will be used to promote Russian IT software products on the Internet. The RFRIT Development Institute is part of the VEB.RF Development Corporation group. And the Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation plays the role of a supervising agency.
“Sorcerers” are elements of search results that offer the user an answer to his request directly on the page with search results (in this case, on Yandex’s own services). For example, when searching for a car, car cards from the Yandex. Auto.
In the summer of 2020, Avito, Drome, Cian.ru, Ivi, Profi.ru, 2GIS and other services filed a complaint with the Federal Antimonopoly Service about abuse of Yandex’s dominant position in the company’s search results. According to the complaint, Yandex leads users to the Internet company’s own services, preventing the services from using the tool. In this regard, companies are losing traffic and are forced to spend more on promoting their own services, the companies pointed out.
FAS initiated a case against the company on the grounds of violation of antitrust laws. Until April 1, 2021, Yandex had to stop the primary promotion of its own services in search results with the help of “sorcerers”.
Yandex objected that the algorithm with the “sorcerer” allows the search engine to successfully compete with other search engines, primarily with Google. “It would be possible to instruct search engines — Yandex, for example — that all results be the same, just links and a title on the page. But the consumer will lose, because such “sterilization” will lead to a deterioration of the product, ” explained RBC head of “Yandex” Tigran Khudaverdyan.
Yandex also accused those who filed complaints against it that they themselves discriminated against competitors’ services on their sites.
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