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Yandex & Russian Watchdog Resolve Antitrust Dispute

By  |  May 30, 2022

Yandex has signed a settlement agreement with the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia (FAS) and a consortium of Russian Internet companies, which includes major Russian classifieds like Avito, Cian, Profi, and others, in connection with an antitrust lawsuit against Yandex.

The Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia opened the so-called “sorcerer case” against Yandex back in April last year. The agency claimed that in the search results of Yandex, preference is given to branded services, such as Yandex.Market, Yandex.Mediaservice and Kinopoisk.

In January of this year, Yandex entered into a settlement agreement with the services and paid 1.5 billion rubles. to the non-profit organization “Russian Foundation for the Development of Information Technologies”.

Yandex had been aggressively expanding its involvement in various sectors, with joint ventures and attempted mergers in mobility, fashion, food delivery, and banking. The company, which began life as a Taxi-hailing app, had a brief partnership with industry leader Uber, which ended earlier this year following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

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