Today, a Moscow court imposed a fine of 3 million rubles ($40,000) on Google. The reason for the fine is that the company failed to delete some content deemed illegal. In fact, this is only part of a wider dispute between Russia and Google. As early as the end of 2018, Russia imposed a fine of 500,000 rubles ($7,530) on Google for failing to remove specific entries from its search results as required by law. Since then, the company has been fined several times in Russia. On the 8th of this month, a Moscow court imposed a fine of 2 million rubles ($28,085) on the internet giant because the company did not delete content deemed illegal by Russia.
In the middle of last month, the Russian communications regulatory agency, Roskomnadzor, stated that so far this year, Google has not paid a fine of 32.5 million rubles ($458,100). At the end of last month, Google announced that it had paid Russia a fine of more than 32 million rubles ($458,100). The fines Roskomnadzor has imposed on technology companies have not been very large. However, the agency is preparing for something massive.
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Russia to slap a $240 million fine on Google
Google is facing a couple of issues in different parts of the world. Today, the Russian communications regulatory agency, the Federal Agency for Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media Supervision (Roskomnadzor), announced today that it will issue a huge fine to Google before the end of the month. Roskomnadzor said that it will seek to impose a fine of 5% to 20% of its annual Russian revenue. The fine will get up to a maximum of $240 million U.S. dollars. The reason for this fine is that Google has repeatedly failed to delete content deemed illegal. This is by far the strongest punishment Russia has imposed on any foreign technology company.
Roskomnadzor had earlier fined Google for not deleting illegal content, but the fine was relatively small. Roskomnadzor said today that Google has not paid a fine of 32.5 million rubles (approximately $458,100) so far this year. In recent months, Russia has taken a series of measures to strengthen the supervision of American technology companies. For this reason, there have been punishments for companies like Apple, Google, Twitter, and Facebook.
According to Roskomnadzor, it will significantly increase the fines on American technology companies such as Google and Facebook. Roskomnadzor data shows that so far this year, Facebook has been fined 66 million rubles (approximately $900,000) by Russia, Twitter and Google have been fined 38.4 million rubles (approximately $542,000) and 26 million rubles (approximately $367,000), respectively. In addition, Google and Apple have also been fined for other violations.
