This article was originally published by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and is reprinted with permission.
Russia’s media regulator, Roskomnadzor, has opened a case against U.S. tech giant Google for allegedly failing to remove banned content from its search engine.
Roskomnadzor said on November 23 that Google had not removed up to 30 percent of “dangerous content” from its search engine.
“The company is accused of failing to comply with the requirements of Russian legislation on the removal of Internet resources containing information banned in Russia from search results,” Roskomnadzor said in a statement.
Some of the alleged dangerous content involved extremism, pornography, and promoting suicide, it said.
The so-called administrative procedure could lead to a court case and a fine of up to 5 million rubles ($65,670).
Google did not immediately comment.
Under Russian law, search engines are required to remove from their search results sites that are blocked in Russia. To do this, they must connect to Roskomnadzor’s register of prohibited information.
Google has been slapped with relatively small fines several times in the past for its refusal to filter search results.
Google regularly removes links to banned sites from search engines, but not automatically and only after studying the grounds for the ban.
