Russian Antimonopoly Service Bans Google Acquisition of Begun

Back in July we reported on acquisition of a Russian contextual advertising company Begun (one of the largest companies working in the field in Russia) by Google. At the time we suggested that a combination of contextual advertising sold by Begun and Google AdSense could very well serve to monopolize the market of such ads in the Russian segment of the internet.

Now it looks like I was not alone questioning if Google would build yet another monopoly with this acquisition: today Russian news outlets report that the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service has banned the acquisition.

The official reason looks quite innocent: the authorities claim that Google has not submitted the complete information on all the personnel of the company working in Russia. Absence of this information was supposed to prevent the antitrust agency from evaluating the consequences of such a deal correctly.

But I believe it is quite obvious that the authorities have decided that increasing Google’s presence in the Russian contextual advertising market could potentially damage the market and the competition.

Via (in Russian)