A Russian court has imposed its biggest penalty yet of 7.2 billion rubles or $98 million to tech giant Google for its failure to erase banned content, Bloomberg reported.
The court noted Google’s non-compliance to orders mandating the firm to take down content, with the fine calculated based on the firm’s revenue. The penalty is said to be the biggest fine yet, amid the crackdown on overseas tech firms.
Google said it is looking into the ruling and will study the next possible steps to be taken. It generated about 85 rubles in 2020 in Russia, based on information from the Spark-Interfax database.
Ruling party Deputy Anton Gorelkin noted that the latest ruling fulfills the decisions of both American and European courts “unquestioningly” and believes “unpleasant measures” will be taken should Google fail to learn from it.
The Russian federal communications regulator earlier announced fines of 5% to 20% of annual local revenue for failure to delete banned content.
