Russian court slaps Google, Meta with massive fines

A Moscow court fined Google nearly US$100 million Friday over its failure to delete content banned by local law, a penalty that reflects Russian efforts to step up pressure on big technology companies.

The Tagansky District Court ruled that Google repeatedly neglected to remove the banned content, and ordered the company to pay an administrative fine of about 7.2 billion rubles (about US$98.4 million).

Google said it would study the court documents before deciding on its next steps.

Later Friday, the court also slapped a fine of nearly 2 billion rubles (US$27.2 million) on Meta for failure to remove banned content.

Russian courts had previously imposed smaller fines on Google, Facebook and Twitter this year, and Friday's rulings marked the first time the size of the fine was calculated based on revenue.