YandexGo Must Take Down Yandex Market Ad

YandexGo had violated Article 21 of Uzbekistan’s Law on Competition. Photo: Yandex Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan’s Competition Committee has taken action against YandexGo UB LLC following a complaint from Uzum Market LLC, accusing YandexGo of unfair competition through a misleading advertisement for Yandex Market.

The committee launched an investigation after Uzum Market reported that the Yandex Market commercial, aired on television and social media, appeared to copy elements from Uzum’s previous videos. The case was reviewed by the Special Commission of the Competition Committee.

According to the findings:

The actress’s purple dress and the opening visuals in the Yandex Market ad closely resembled scenes from earlier Uzum Market videos.
A scene in which the lead character holds a bunch of grapes and asks, «Is this the market?», followed by disapproving reactions from others, was interpreted as a reference to Uzum Market (whose name derives from «grape»).
The ad later features the line «No, this is a different market», implying Yandex Market is superior, without directly naming Uzum Market.

The Special Commission concluded that YandexGo had violated Article 21 of Uzbekistan’s Law on Competition, which prohibits misleading comparisons. In this case, the ad indirectly portrayed a competitor in a negative light without providing objective comparison criteria or verified product claims.

However, as Uzum Market did not present concrete evidence of direct financial harm to market participants or consumers, the incident was classified as having low economic impact, and no fines or legal penalties were issued.

Instead, the committee ordered YandexGo to:

Remove the Yandex Market advertisement from all public media platforms within one month
Submit proof of removal to the Competition Committee by August 14, 2025

YandexGo retains the right to appeal the decision through the committee’s Appeals Board or via the courts.

Kursiv also reports that Yandex Uzbekistan has announced the launch of an enhanced version of its search engine, Yandex Search, now equipped with neural networks trained specifically on the Uzbek language.