Google fined nearly 100m dollars in Russia over undeleted content

MOSCOW: A Russian court has fined Google a total of 7.2 billion roubles (98 million dollars) for allegedly refusing to delete “forbidden content.”

According to the court ruling cited by news agency Interfax on Friday, the amount of the fine was based for the first time on the company’s annual turnover in Russia.

The US internet giant said it wanted to study the ruling in detail before discussing further steps.

Google has already been fined several times in Russia, as have Facebook, Twitter and TikTok.

Russian authorities have been targeting social networks especially since the mass protests at the beginning of the year against theimprisonment of Kremlin opponent Alexei Navalny.

They accuse the platforms of not consistently removing messages calling for unauthorized demonstrations, child pornography content orsuicide calls.

Internet activists criticise the actions as repression against a free internet in Russia.

The deputy head of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Anton Gorelkin, said that “very unpleasant measures” would be taken if fines did not help.