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Russian regulator still sees possibility to sign out-of-court agreement with Google

In September 2015, Russia's antimonopoly service ruled that Google Inc. and Google Ireland Ltd. had breached the competition protection law under the complaint of the Russian Internet company Yandex

MOSCOW, March 1. /TASS/. Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly (FAS) still sees an opportunity for signing an amicable agreement with Google regarding the lawsuit of this company demanding to declare the decision of the Russian regulator invalid aid there us, the regulator’s head Igor Artemyev told reporters on Tuesday.

"We proceed from the assumption that such a proposal may be made any time. But in order to make it certain we need one. A company which has different relations with us should say: yes, we agree that we have violated this or that provision in the law on competition," - he said.

"If they [Google - TASS] at any stage of the legal hearing tell us that they want it we will judge by the situation of course but this is not impossible," he added.

On September 14, 2015 the Federal Antimonopoly Service ruled that Google Inc. and Google Ireland Ltd. had breached the competition protection law under the complaint of the Russian Internet company Yandex. According to the regulator, Google obliged manufacturers of Android OS-based devices to pre-install its applications together with Android platform. The FAS said that Google’s policy restricted installation of applications by other developers. Google did not agree with the ruling and appealed to the court.

On January 14, Artemyev said that according to experience of the regulator, Google may dispute the decision for at least a year and the process of curing the violation and paying the fine may last until 2017. He said that the size of the penalty for violating. Russia’s competition law for US Google Corporation may amount to 7% of the turnover in 2014. At the same time the inflation of 2014-2017 will be taken into account.