Russian authorities have fined Google more than 32 million roubles ($455,079) in fines for failing to remove information that they deemed unlawful, according to a statement released by the firm and a Russian legislator following negotiations on Monday. US tech company Google pays fine of 32 million roubles to Russia over violating its content policies Moscow deems illegal.
In the boldest effort yet to rein in international tech corporations, Russia announced last week that it will attempt to sanction Google a percentage of its annual Russian revenue later this month for persistently failing to delete forbidden information from its search engine and YouTube channel.
In a statement released on Monday, Vasily Piskarev, the chairman of a parliamentary commission investigating foreign interference in Russian affairs, said Google’s representatives had expressed a desire to engage in dialogue and that the company had paid more than 32 million roubles in outstanding fines.
In a blog post, Marco Pancini, YouTube’s EMEA director for working with state agencies, stated that Google had paid all penalties that had been imposed on the company on time. According to the Russian communications regulator Roskomnadzor, this amount amounted to 32.5 million roubles for this year.
According to Interfax, the Russian communications regulator Roskomnadzor stated on Monday that it has the technological capabilities to slow down the pace of YouTube, but that administrative measures are now adequate.
According to Pancini, Google’s cooperation with requests to erase content reached 96.2 percent in 2020, and the company purged over 489,000 videos in the first half of this year. However, Russia complained that too much forbidden information was still available on the internet.
Piskarev stated last week that this included pornographic material involving children. The Russian government has asked other international technology companies to remove messages that promote drug misuse and risky pastimes, information about improvised weapons and explosives, and posts by groups that it considers extreme or terrorist in nature, among other things.
As of the beginning of October, around 2,650 pieces of unlawful information on Google’s internet resources had not been removed, according to Piskarev, as reported by the RIA news agency.
“As we can see, work has been done, but it is still far from perfect,” he added. “It is still far from ideal.”
Piskarev stated that Pancini had stated that Google’s failure to delete all of the prohibited content was due to technological issues.
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