According to reports, in response to the Russian court’s fine of 7.2 billion rubles against Google, Google stated that it will decide whether to appeal the fine for not deleting the banned information after studying the court’s ruling.
According to reports, a Moscow court announced on December 24 that it had imposed a fine of 7.2 billion rubles (approximately US$98 million) on Google for its repeated failure to delete content deemed illegal by Russia.
It is worth mentioning that this is the first time that Russia has imposed a fine on a company based on revenue in such a case. Previously, Russia had fined Google several times for not deleting illegal content, but the fines were relatively small.
Russia’s state communications regulatory agency, the Federal Agency for Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media Supervision (Roskomnadzor), stated on October 19 this year that Google has not paid a fine of 32.5 million rubles (approximately US$458,100) so far this year. Subsequently, Google stated that it had paid Russia a fine of more than 32 million rubles.