A new report from Bloomberg released on Thursday finds that the anti-trust regulations in the EU which are being leveraged against global tech majors such as Google are increasing the popularity of the Russian search engine Yandex across the bloc.
Data from the website of the Android operating system shows that Yandex has risen through the rankings to become one of the top five search engines in Germany, Italy, the Czech Republic, and Denmark, as well as several other European states.
Yandex is made available as a choice to EU android users on the choice screen, which allows users of mobile devices to pick an alternative to Google to use as their default search engine.
Google was forced to offer the choice screen in 2019, after Brussels had launched in increasingly vocal campaign criticizing the company’s anti-competitive practices. The EU finally fined the tech giant €4.34 billion ($4.6 billion) and ordered it to cease blocking other companies in the search engine sector from entering the market. Google is still appealing the decision in the EU court system.
Analysts say the recent rise in the popularity of Yandex is tied to the EU’s new Digital Services Act (DSA), which came into effect at the end of August, and applies to any online platform or search engine with over 45 million users. The new law imposes stricter rules on content moderation, user privacy, and transparency on internet giants, such as Meta, Apple, and Google.
They are also required to focus more effort on preventing the spread of harmful content, reduce the use of certain practices to target users, and provide regulators with internal data. Companies which are found to have violated the DSA will face a fine of as much as 6% of their global turnover, and they could, in the case of repeat offenses, receive a ban from operating within the bloc.
Data from StatCounter shows that the market share of mobile search engine use in Europe occupied by Yandex surged after the introduction of the DSA, increasing from 1.6% in August to almost 2.8% in September. Still, Google remains the sector leader, with a 95.3% share of the market.
