Yandex Could Be Winner From Anti-Google Stance In Russia

• Shares of Yandex NV (NASDAQ: YNDX) spiked higher by more than 6 percent on Monday.
• The move is attributed to reports that Russia's regulators are ordering Google Inc (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) to stop abusing its dominance.
• Yandex is Russia's largest domestic search engine and competes against Google in the Russian market.

Shares of Yandex spiked higher by more than 6 percent on Monday after various media sources reported that the Russian government has ruled Google violated local competition rules and has been ordered to stop abusing its market position.

Google has faced scrutiny in Russia for quite some time. Time reported back in February that Google is being investigated for violating Russia's anti-monopoly laws. It was also reported that the investigation stemmed from a complaint by Yandex, Russia's largest Internet company and one of the five largest search engine worldwide.

Time noted Google has been able to restrict which apps can be pre-installed on Android devices, essentially blocking Yandex from having its apps and services pre-installed in Android phones and tablets.

Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service passed along Yandex's claims over Google's unfair business practices to include an article in the Protection of Competition law which covers abuse of a dominant position.

"Antitrust case is also one of the priorities because it will remove limitations imposed by Google on us being able to make use distribution dealers with manufacture of cellphones," Yandex's Chief Operating Officer Alexander Shulgin said during the company's Q2 conference call. "And also we work OEMs, but as I said currently, possibility to install our app specifically search app and browser is limited because of Google's restrictions imposed on OEMs."

According to recent estimates, Yandex's share of the Russian search market has fallen to 57.3 percent in the second quarter from 58.6 percent in the first quarter and 59.7 percent in the prior quarter.