Not Terrified! Russia Again Fines Google, This Time Only Rp754 Million

JAKARTA - A Moscow court on Monday, January 17 said it had ordered Alphabet's Google to pay 4 million rubles (Rp 754 million) for not removing access to content prohibited in Russia. This is the latest in a series of fines for the US tech giant.

As reported by Reuters, Russia raised concerns late last year in its efforts to increase pressure on Big Tech, imposing hefty revenue-based fines on Google and Meta Platform Inc for repeatedly failing to remove content Moscow deems illegal. Google itself declined to comment on the sentence.

In addition, the TASS news agency also reported that Google had been fined for providing access to banned website links.

Previously, at the end of December 2021, the Court in Moscow had also fined Google and Meta Platforms Inc for repeatedly failing to remove content deemed illegal in the country.

Google was fined 7.2 billion rubles (Rp 1.3 trillion), while Meta Platforms, formerly Facebook Inc, was 2 billion rubles (Rp 377 billion), as quoted by Reuters on Sunday, December 26.

Russia's communications regulator Roskomnadzor said Facebook and Instagram failed to remove two thousand content that violated the rules there, while Google's 2,600.