This presentation by the Russian Federation was made during the break-out Session 1, “Techniques and evidence for assessing market power” in the discussion “Economic analysis and evidence in abuse cases” held at the 20th meeting of the OECD Global Forum on Competition on 7 December 2021. More papers and presentations on the topic can be found out at oe.cd/eac.

1. Experience of the FAS Russia in assessing market power in the
investigation of the case against Google
(2015-2017)
Mr. Andrey Tsyganov
Deputy Head
OECD Global Forum on Competition
December 7, 2021
FEDERAL ANTIMONOPOLY SERVICE

2. Essence of the violation
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Violation: Google did not allow
preinstalling on the Android OS
competing with Google Play
applications
Theories of harm:
tying
discrimination
and
prioritization

3. Market analysis
• Product – app store "Google Play";
• Product market boundaries – app stores "Google Play",
"Samsung Apps", "Yandex.Store";
• Geographical market boundaries – national market.
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4. Calculation of shares of economic entities on the
market
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1st step: the FAS Russia took into account physical indicators (the
number of mobile devices based on the Android OS on which
application stores localized for Russia are pre-installed).
3 quarter of 2014 2013 2012
Share of Google Inc.
70,4 % 69,46% [n/d]
Share of Samsung
Electronics Co. 19,2% 26,41% [n/d]
Share of Yandex
Europe AG
(including the app
store pre-installed by
"JSC Megafon"
under the brand
GetUpps!).
10,4% 4,13% [n/d]
Total: 100% 100% 100%

5. High barriers to market
entry:
due to the practice of tying,
competing application
developers were actually
deprived of the opportunity
to pre-install their
applications and services
together with Google Play
and on the same terms as
Google applications and
services.
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During the analysis the following was determined:
Limited
substitutability:
app stores developed for
other operating systems
for mobile devices
cannot be considered as
substitutable

6. 6
• by abusing its dominant position in an uncompetitive market (the app store market),
the company restricted competition in a competitive market (the mobile app market);
• the requirement to mobile device manufacturers on tying the Google Mobile Services
application package with the app store as a condition of getting the Google Play app
store;
• the requirement on an obligatory installation/pre-installation of the Google search as
default all the points of inserting search queries for the general search on the Internet;
• the conditions to place the Google applications on the main screen of mobile devices;
• the prohibition to pre-install competitors’ applications and services ensured by the
provision of a rewards from Google.
This allowed Google to carry out various anti-competitive
practices:

7. Admission of the violation and imposition of a fine
• On September 18, 2015, the FAS Russia made the decision on the
violation of the Law on Protection of Competition by Google through
the abuse of its dominant position.
• Google appealed the FAS Russia decision. Within the framework of this
trial, decisions of the courts of first and appeal instances were adopted,
which confirmed the legality of the decisions of the FAS Russia.
• Due to the fact of abuse of dominant position, the case of administrative
offence of the Article 14.31 of the Code of Administrative Offences of
the Russian Federation was considered, and on August 11, 2016,
Google Inc. was imposed a fine of 438 million rubles (about
7 million dollars). The fine was paid by Google in full.
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8. Issuing a Remedy
With the purpose of recovering competition on the market, the FAS Russia
issued a Remedy to Google that was aimed at eliminating discrimination and
prioritization practices of the company in order to improve operating
conditions on the market for the following economic entities:
a) Google`s competitors;
b) Manufacturers of applications;
c) Vendors (mobile device providers).
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9. Conclusions
• the need to develop new approaches to assessing multilateral markets;
• standard economic analysis mechanisms are insufficient in cases with
"zero-price" markets;
• determination of market shares based on radically different indicators for
calculating market share, such as:
1. number of applications, users and big data, ads, downloads, transactions
through the platform;
2. assessing the level of direct and indirect network effects and the platform
gaining market power;
3. assessing the degree of influence on dependent markets by the platform as
a key digital infrastructure.
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10. - discriminatory conditions for working
on Windows 10 antivirus application
software
- discrimination of developers of mobile
parental control applications
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The approaches
developed in
the Google case
are used in the
investigation of
other cases
of abuse
of dominance
in digital
markets
- establishment for Russian hotels of
price parity and parity of conditions
- limiting the ability of competing services
to interact with HeadHunter’s platform

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