Russian watchdog threatens to reduce Google’s speed in Russia

Russian telecom watchdog Roskomnadzor threatens to cut the internet speed of Google’s services in Russia if the search giant fails to remove links to illegal content. Google was fined about $80,000 on Friday.

According to the telecom watchdog, Google failed to comply with the legal obligation to remove links to illegal content from Russian search results. That writes the Reuters news agency. Google was given 24 hours yesterday to remove the links to the videos in question, otherwise the company would have to pay fines. The fines were imposed by a Russian court after the deadline expired on Friday. The telecom watchdog also threatened to reduce the internet speed to Google’s services if Google did not remove the links.

In addition, if Google goes wrong again, the company risks receiving a fine of ten percent of its annual turnover, according to Roskomnadzor. According to the Russian telecom watchdog, twelve YouTube videos contain content that could, among other things, encourage drug use and encourage young people to participate in protests against the imprisonment of Alexei Navalny in January. Links to these videos had to be taken offline.

At the time of writing, Google has not yet responded, but according to Reuters, Google has appealed the court’s decision to issue fines.