Google will pay Russia a $6.75 million fine following complaint by Yandex
The Moscow Court has approved a settlement agreement between Google and the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) of the Russian Federation, Deputy Head of the FAS Alexei Dotsenko told reporters. He confirms that Google will abandon exclusive pre-installation of its applications on Android mobile devices, and will not limit the pre-installation of third-party applications, in particular, to the home screen of the device.
As part of the settlement agreement, Google will also pay an earlier-designated fine of 438 million rubles ($6.75 million USD).
In addition, according to the terms of the settlement agreement, Google will forgo exclusive pre-installation of its applications on mobile Android devices, and will not limit the pre-installation of applications by third parties.
Instead, Google will develop a selection box that will be available on the updated version of Chrome. As a result, when the Chrome widget is launched on the main screen, the user will be shown a "selection window" with other search engines by default.
Over the course of 60 days, Google will consider applications from other systems to put on the "selection window" in existing Android phones. This has opened the channel for installation of applications on Android mobile devices to other application developers.
FAS initiated a court case against Google le in February 2015, after a complaint by Yandex, Google's main competitor in Russia.