Russia's antitrust authority on Thursday said it had opened an investigation into Microsoft for allegedly abusing its dominance in the antivirus software market.
In
a statement, the Federal Anti-monopoly Service said it had taken the
decision after being contacted by the Moscow-based internet security
giant Kaspersky.
It accuses Microsoft of reducing to six
working days the time for third party software vendors to adapt their
antivirus packages to the Windows 10 operating system, compared with two
months for earlier versions.
When a
Windows user installs the latest operating system, its antivirus
software is disabled, with Microsoft's Windows Defender system taking
over by default.
With only a few days to
make the changes necessary to ensure compatibility, software developers
like Kaspersky do not have the time to provide users with adequate
service.
"As Microsoft itself
develops the Windows Defender antivirus system, which automatically
becomes active if the third party software products do not have time to
be adapted to Windows 10, such measures constitute an unfair advantage
for Microsoft," FAS deputy director Anatoli Golomolzine said in the statement.
Kaspersky
confirmed approaching the antitrust authority as well as the European
Commission in a statement which said the move came "after months of fruitless discussions and multiple exhausting attempts to resolve the issue directly with Microsoft."
In
August, the FAS started legal proceedings against US tech giant Apple
over the alleged fixing of retail prices for iPhones in Russia.
In
the same month, it also hit Google with a $6.75 million fine for
abusing its dominant market position by forcing smartphone makers to
install its search engine on phones running the Android operating
system.
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