Google paid Russia a $6.75 million fine
According to Russia's Interfax news agency, Google paid a fine of 438 million rubles or 6.5 million USD assigned by the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS), as stated by the press service of FAS.
In mid-April, the Moscow Arbitration Court approved a settlement agreement between the FAS and Google, under which the parties will withdraw mutual claims in the case of violations in the mobile applications market. The American company then agreed to pay a fine of 438 million rubles.
"As part of the settlement agreement, it was possible to find a mechanism for eliminating the consequences of antimonopoly law violations previously identified by Russian FAS and to ensure competition in mobile application markets, primarily mobile search," the message said.
Under the terms of the deal, Google will abstain from exclusive pre-installation of its applications on devices running Android and will not limit pre-installation of third party applications.
In September 2016, the FAS obliged Google to notify users of Android-devices about the possibility of using alternative search engines and deactivation of pre-installed applications. In November, the FAS fined the American company one million rubles or 17,000 USD for failure to comply with the order in time. A month later, the department initiated a new case against Google for failure to comply with its instructions.
The catalyst for the process was a complaint against Google in February 2015 filed by the Russian company Yandex.