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Russia: Google removes Android restriction with settlement

By  |  April 26, 2017

Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) said on Monday that Google has agreed to a voluntary settlement, in the Moscow District Court of Arbitration, following two years of negotiations since the FAS claimed Google was abusing its market dominance.

Google paid a $7.8 million fine to Russia‘s antimonopoly agency and they have since agreed to allow phone manufacturers to change the default search engine on devices. “We managed to find a balance between the necessity to develop the Android ecosystem and interests of third party developers for promoting their mobile applications and services on Android-based devices”.

Google “will be obliged not to restrict pre-installation of any competing search engines and applications” on its Android operating system in the Russian Federation, the FAS said on its website.

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