A Moscow court imposed a fine of 3 million rubles (approximately US$40,000) on Google today for failing 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 (approximately US$7,530) on Google for failing to remove specific items from its search results as required by law.
Since then, Google has been fined several times in Russia. On the 8th of this month, a Moscow court imposed a fine of 2 million rubles (approximately US$28,085) on Google because the company did not delete content deemed illegal by Russia. In the middle of last month, the Russian communications regulatory agency, the Federal Agency for Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media Supervision (Roskomnadzor), stated that so far this year, Google has not paid a fine of 32.5 million rubles (approximately US$458,100).
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At the end of last month, Google announced that it had paid Russia a fine of more than 32 million rubles. The fines Roskomnadzor has imposed on technology companies have not been very large. But the agency said last month that it may issue a huge fine to Google, with a fine of up to 240 million U.S. dollars. Roskomnadzor said at the time that it would seek to impose a fine of 5% to 20% of its annual Russian revenue, up to a maximum of 240 million U.S. dollars.
The reason is that Google has repeatedly failed to delete content deemed illegal, which will be the strongest punishment Russia has imposed on foreign technology companies so far.