The normal reaction to any gesture of the American Big Tech in a normal country looks like this: a few boring people in boring suits gather, examine documents, pass a sentence. And literally at the level of a magistrate. No shouting in social networks: "How long?", No need to count money in other people's pockets, although it is not very clear why Big Tech does not pay taxes, for example, on the territory of Russia to which they broadcast, collect advertising, collect personal data and sell them. You can start small - with the decision of the magistrate. Such a boring little piece of paper with a boring old school print.
Here just now we already had such an event: "The Magistrates' Court of the Tagansky District of Moscow issued a ruling on imposing a fine of 1.5 million rubles on Google for a repeated violation related to insufficient filtering of prohibited content in the search engine," the court said ...
You can giggle as much as you like at the fact that 1.5 million rubles is something that a simple Russian corrupt official can leave in a Moscow restaurant and Google won't even notice it. It's not about the sum. The amounts will change as soon as you start. But for so many years no one dared to utter a word in front of some Brin - they sat in silence and scooped up a full spoon. Note: on your own territory.
Our bosses pretend not to notice that on the territory of Russia, Google, Twitter and Facebook have introduced strict political censorship, which, in fact, is prohibited by law in our country - and for a long time. Under such a pretext, under this - it makes no difference, they also need to bring down Trump, and everything else - collateral losses. Never mind.
It is important that for a completely inexplicable reason, people who have discovered a natural hunt for the platform of Russian origin Telegram, suddenly turn on the fool when it comes to American networks and search engines, which have long established themselves as hostile to the Russian people and the Russian state. Are you in a share, or what? I won’t be surprised, I’m not surprised at anything for a long time.
It is no coincidence that the Moscow media policemen on the pages of DW are singing hosanna to the bodies that "oppose the Sinification of the Internet in Russia." Tell me who praises you and I'll tell you what you deserve. These are all the same characters who tell the people tales about the "independent open Internet" and so on. Already no country believes in these myths and legends of Ancient Greece, including America itself. But we are being fed the day before yesterday ideas that have nothing to do with reality. Since 2016, everything has become clear about the party press and party literature, as Lenin said. What are we to hang on to now?
Big Tech is playing with one goal, spreading the pitch as far as it can. What have we got to do with it? Why should the inhabitants of Russia become pawns and sixes in these games?
Here they tried in 2018. A law was introduced, according to which search engines had to exclude links to resources blocked in Russia from the issuance. By the end of October, Roskomnadzor noted that Google had not connected to the federal state information system (FSIS), which contains a list of prohibited sites, and even promised to fine the Internet giant. Which I did after a couple of months.
And then, too, everyone laughed at the amount of the fine - 500 thousand rubles. Behind the laughter there was one ingenuous idea: "Well, what are you going to do to us?" And really - what? They demanded to move the servers to the territory of the Russian Federation. And where are they still? You would never guess.
Then it is understandable why they laugh at you. It is impossible to put forward demands on behalf of the state and not seek their fulfillment, because then the state, on whose behalf something was put forward, looks impotent. Although this failure has very specific living authors - and their name is definitely not RF.
Someone came up with a good idea - to fine such giants as Google, not for some restaurant price, but for a percentage of the proceeds that the office generates in the Russian Federation. Even one percent - it will already be 450 million. This is already an amount that Brin's accountants cannot ignore. But for some reason there is still no political will to introduce such a practice.
But on the other hand, we already have a magistrate who has the strength of mind to resist the broken-down overseas office. And this means that the country is normal. All through the court. You wanted everything in Russia to be decided through the courts? Well, firstly, be careful with your desires, and secondly, it's still good.
And the amount? Well, already three times more than the first time. You look, slowly and will reach the desired threshold, after which no one can giggle.
The author's point of view may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.