Russia's main search engine defeats Google in antitrust complaint

A little over two years ago, Russia's largest search provider, Yandex, filed a complaint against Google for what it believed were anti-competitive practices. Now, Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service has given credence to Yandex's claims and "issued a prescription to Google in order to require the company to remove anti-competitive restrictions from its agreements with manufacturers," according to a press release. That means Google won't be able to pre-install apps on phones, control the default search engine or place its own apps on device home screens in the region. Furthermore: "Google will be committed to securing the rights of the third parties to include their search engines in the choice window." In a "few months," Google will have a home-screen search widget that will offer up any manner of search providers (yep, including Yandex) assuming they sign a commercial agreement for their inclusion in the query box. For its part, the FAS says that this is a good move to ensure everyone is on the same footing in terms of competition for app placement and web searches.