2025 has kickstarted on a not-so-high note for search engine giant Google.
While pending lawsuits continue to haunt the search platform, we’re now hearing about Russia being the latest nation to scrutinize the firm’s advertising and search services. This is right after we heard about a leading British competition watchdog probing the tech giant for the same reason.
The Russian court just rolled out a fine worth 8 billion Roubles for not complying with the government’s orders of paying penalties from the past. The amount is equivalent to $77.9 million.
As per the latest press release shared by the court in Moscow on Telegram, this penalty was launched by the Chertanovo District. For several years, the Russian lawmakers needed foreign tech firms to get rid of the content that it called illegal. Several companies did not oblige to the request and therefore were forced to pay the fine as a punishment for their actions.
For now, there are no reports on what exactly the administrative violation was that led to this groundbreaking punishment against the tech behemoth.
The company is also facing a mega $75 million fine from Turkey for breaking competition laws in the region. Furthermore, it’s got several lawsuits in the pending stage from America including one linked to its online advertising services. So as you can see, the worries keep on mounting for the tech giant and this is the last thing it needs is more heavy fines.
The search engine giant is yet to comment on the issue but we’d like to share how its YouTube app was once attracting 50M users per day in Russia alone. Now, that’s gone down to just 12 million as per data taken from Google itself.
This significant decline delineates how the app was a major target for criticism from Russia. Plenty of critics accused national authorities of purposefully disrupting the app’s download speeds to stop citizens from seeing its material that voiced opposition against the current ruling government of Vladimir Putin.
Russia defended the claims by denying the allegations. It called out the issues as one linked to Google’s own failure to upgrade equipment in the Russian nation. So this new fine is certainly raising tensions between Russia and other foreign tech firms.
Image: DIW-Aigen
Read next: Court Filings Expose Meta’s Determined Drive to Surpass OpenAI’s Latest GPT-4 Model
While pending lawsuits continue to haunt the search platform, we’re now hearing about Russia being the latest nation to scrutinize the firm’s advertising and search services. This is right after we heard about a leading British competition watchdog probing the tech giant for the same reason.
The Russian court just rolled out a fine worth 8 billion Roubles for not complying with the government’s orders of paying penalties from the past. The amount is equivalent to $77.9 million.
As per the latest press release shared by the court in Moscow on Telegram, this penalty was launched by the Chertanovo District. For several years, the Russian lawmakers needed foreign tech firms to get rid of the content that it called illegal. Several companies did not oblige to the request and therefore were forced to pay the fine as a punishment for their actions.
For now, there are no reports on what exactly the administrative violation was that led to this groundbreaking punishment against the tech behemoth.
The company is also facing a mega $75 million fine from Turkey for breaking competition laws in the region. Furthermore, it’s got several lawsuits in the pending stage from America including one linked to its online advertising services. So as you can see, the worries keep on mounting for the tech giant and this is the last thing it needs is more heavy fines.
The search engine giant is yet to comment on the issue but we’d like to share how its YouTube app was once attracting 50M users per day in Russia alone. Now, that’s gone down to just 12 million as per data taken from Google itself.
This significant decline delineates how the app was a major target for criticism from Russia. Plenty of critics accused national authorities of purposefully disrupting the app’s download speeds to stop citizens from seeing its material that voiced opposition against the current ruling government of Vladimir Putin.
Russia defended the claims by denying the allegations. It called out the issues as one linked to Google’s own failure to upgrade equipment in the Russian nation. So this new fine is certainly raising tensions between Russia and other foreign tech firms.
Read next: Court Filings Expose Meta’s Determined Drive to Surpass OpenAI’s Latest GPT-4 Model
