Google threatened to stop removing content banned in Russia due to a lawsuit from Tsargrad

Google threatened to stop removing content banned in Russia from search results due to a lawsuit against the company from the Tsargrad TV channel. About it informs Forbes.

Google said that the court forfeit, which threatens the company in a lawsuit from the channel “Tsargrad”, entails risks for the company’s ability to work in Russia. They noted that the consequences of the decision on the lawsuit could be jeopardized, including the ability to remove pages and data blocked by Russian courts from search results. At the same time, only in the second half of 2020, at the request of Roskomnadzor, the company excluded 250 thousand pages and did not index 167 thousand more.

A representative of Tsargrad told Forbes that, in his opinion, in this way Google is offering the Russian court a deal, under which the channel’s page on YouTube will remain blocked, and the IT giant will continue to comply with the law “On information and information technologies.”

We will remind, in July last year, Google blocked the account of “Constantinople” on YouTube. The company stated that the reason for the blocking was “violation of export laws”. The founder of Tsargrad, Konstantin Malofeev, has been under EU and US sanctions since 2014.

Because of the blockage, “Constantinople” filed a lawsuit. In April 2021, a Moscow court ordered Google to unblock the Tsargrad channel. According to Forbes calculations, if YouTube does not unblock the channel, then the amount of Google fines within seven months will reach 94 trillion rubles.

In July, Google proposed to Tsargrad to peacefully settle the legal dispute over the blocking, but the matter never came to negotiations.