Russia has hit Google with more than $380 million in fines this month

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Russia has hit Google with more than $380 million in fines this month
Russian President Vladimir Putin.Contributor/Getty Images
  • Russia issued Google with a $33 million antitrust fine Tuesday.
  • A week ago it hit Google with a $350 million fine for not taking down content it deemed "fake news."
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Russia has hit Google with two massive fines this month totalling $383 million.

Russia's competition watchdog fined Google 2 billion rubles ($33 million) on Tuesday and accused the tech giant of breaking competition laws with its video platform YouTube, Reuters reported.

This comes one week after Russia issued Google with a 21.1 billion ruble fine ($350 million at time of writing) for failing to remove content which media regulator Roszkomnador said contained "fake news" about Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

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Russia appears to be stepping up pressure on the company, which is is one of the few US Big Tech companies to still operate a service in Russia since the war in Ukraine began — although it stopped selling ads in the region in March and blocked Russian state media apps from its European app store.

Google's Russian business filed for bankruptcy in May after local authorities seized control of its bank account.

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A Russian court also fined Google 15 million rubles ($249,000) in June accusing it of breaking a Russian law that requires tech companies to localize user data, Reuters reported.

"We will study the text of the official decision to define our next steps," a Google spokesperson told Insider in reference to the latest fine.

Many large US tech companies have either been blocked by the Russian government in the country or decided to restrict their services in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

Russia blocked social media sites including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Apple halted all product sales in March, and blocked apps from state media outlets from its App Store. Amazon's cloud service AWS stopped accepting new customers the same month.

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