Russia will fine U.S.-based tech giant Google because it failed to integrate a mandatory blacklist of sites into its architecture, as Russian law states that search engines are not to provide links to banned sites, Radio Liberty in Russian reports.
Google’s failure to abide by the rules, which was reported by the Russian communications watchdog Roskomnadzor, will cost it between $7,600 and $10,600 under the current legislation, which will probably not be that big of punishment for the multibillion dollar enterprise.
The demand to filter search query results was introduced in Russia in November 2017 as part of a crackdown on services facilitating access to banned websites.
The fines for violators were added to the Russian administrative code in September. Search engine operators had 30 days to comply with the rules or be punished. Some tech companies, including Russia’s Yandex and Mail.ru, had complied in due order.
According to Roskomnadzor, Google has a grace period to respond to the watchdog’s warning, before it can turn to the courts to authorize the fine.
This year, Russia’s telecommunications watchdog banned more than 1.8 million IP addresses that belong to Amazon and Google as part of its efforts to block messaging app Telegram over its refusal to provide Russian authorities access to their users’ chat logs.
