The Antimonopoly Regulation Department of the Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) has revealed Yandex's dominant position in Russian advertising market in search display.

EEC representatives also saw “signs of violations” of competition rules in Yandex's actions, including the following:

• advantages for displaying information about your own services in "enriched responses" (search display widgets);
• the ability to refuse an advertiser to display his offer in search results due to the ad block of services and products of Yandex itself;
• providing access to search widgets after transferring data from third-party resources, as well as connecting Yandex.Metrica and the Yandex Pay service.

The Commission believes that Yandex's actions may lead to restriction of competition and infringement of the interests of others. At the same time, the EEC did not initiate a case, since it was not possible to prove the dominant position of the company on the territory of two or more EAEU member states. The materials were submitted to the FAS.

Product cards

Avito, ivi, Cian, Yandex Pay

Last year, a number of services and companies, including Avito, ivi, Cyan, Profi.ru, complained to the FAS, a regulatory body, about Yandex because of widgets in search results. After considering the complaint, the regulator obliged Yandex to stop underestimating the positions of other companies in the search results. In April 2021, the FAS filed a case against the company. In May, Yandex opened the “enriched responses” (search display widgets) service for all partners, publishing the basic principles of working with them.

Original (in Russian)