Doesn't look like a good reason for blocking the deal, because Yandex is the very leader among contextual advertising companies in Russia, holding about 65% of all ads.

It seems to me that lawmakers and the like are now viewing Google with the same goggles they used to view Microsoft a couple years back.
- Google Chrome launches and German official warns public.
- German court rules against Google using thumbnail images in Google Image.
- Govt. hires top lawyer against Google-Yahoo Ad deal.
- Now Russia moves in.

Whenever a company will become so powerful so as to influence the public at large with just one single step of theirs (like United Airlines share taking a deep dive with a single issue in Google News), lawmakers will try to limit its influence.

I personally think that Google should be focusing more on it's core abilities like spreading search to personalized, audio, etc. If all Google does is buying companies to remain on top, then perhaps they should wait for govts. to step in, or even worse, for people (and firms) like Krishna Bharat and Sep Kamvar (Kaltix) to refuse to join Google and go on their own.

Or Google won't make past 20:
http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2008-09-09-n33.html

"Among the official reasons given for this rejection was that Google allegedly didn’t submit certain information in relation to their Russian work staff..."

That sounds vaguely ominous... Are you suggesting that Russian authorities blocked the deal because Google refused to hand over their employees' personal information?

Svetlana: "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."

I don't understand the official reasoning here. What does information on individual employees have to do with evaluating the market impact of an acquisition?

Well, if the deal was rejected because of some bureaucratic issues, this paragraph is out of place:

"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."

Mysterius: I'm afraid this is actually the official information given to the press members. But of course it was not about the personal information related to employees, it was only about the number of employees as this information was required to make a decision on how such a deal will influence the competition in the market. But of course this is only an official reason, more of an excuse to block a deal that is not wanted – after all, it is always possible to find flaws in almost any documents any company submits to any official authority.