Adedapo Adesanya
By Adedapo Adesanya
A Russian court in Moscow has fined Google close to $100 million on Friday as Russia ramps up its pressure on foreign tech giants.
The Vladimir Putin led country has piled fines on the world’s biggest internet platforms, accusing them of not moderating their content properly and interfering in the country’s affairs.
The fine on Google is not new with Facebook’s parent company, Meta, and Twitter, getting fined into the tens of millions of rubles.
Friday’s ruling in the Moscow court fined Google a record 7.2 billion rubles, ($98 million, €86 million), the court’s press service said on Telegram, for repeatedly failing to delete illegal content.
The content was not specified, but Russia regularly takes legal action for not removing content it labels illegal, such as pornographic material or posts condoning drugs and suicide.
Meta — which also has a hearing in court on Friday over the same charges has also been threatened with a revenue-based fine.
On Thursday, Twitter was handed its latest fine of three million rubles ($40,000) after authorities started throttling its services some months ago.
In the past few years, the Russian government has used the pretext of protecting minors and fighting extremism to control the Russian segment of the web and began developing a so-called sovereign internet.
Ahead of parliamentary elections in September, Russia’s media watchdog blocked dozes of websites linked to jailed Kremlin critic, Mr Alexei Navalny, whose organisations have been banned in Russia over views considered as extremist.
The regulator also ordered Google and Apple to remove an app dedicated to Navalny’s “Smart Voting” campaign which advised supporters who to vote for and to unseat Kremlin-aligned politicians.
The Silicon Valley giants complied following threats to arrest local staff.
Russia’s media regulator has also blocked dozens of websites linked to Mr Navalny.
Earlier, during protests in January in support of Navalny, authorities accused platforms including Google’s YouTube and Twitter of meddling in Russia’s domestic affairs by not deleting posts calling for people to join the rallies.
President Putin same month complained that large technology companies were competing with states.
The Eastern European country has already blocked a number of websites that have refused to cooperate with authorities, such as the video platform Dailymotion and LinkedIn.
As part of broad efforts to bend foreign tech under its control, Russia in September banned six major VPN providers including Nord VPN and Express VPN.
Russia also introduced a new law demanding that smartphones, computers and other gadgets sold in the country come with pre-installed domestic software and apps.
Russia’s opposition has also accused the Kremlin of using such regulations to further stifle freedom of speech and clamp down on online dissent.
