On Tuesday, Moscow’s Tagansky District Court said that Russia has fined Alphabet’s Google 9 million roubles in the latest chain of penalties against the tech giant for failing to delete content deemed illegal by the Russian government. Moscow’s Tagansky District Court cited legislation that said this may include posts containing child pornography, extremist activities, or the promotion of drug use.

Pressure on foreign tech companies operating in Russia has increased this year, with Moscow demanding that 13 foreign tech companies set up in Russia by January 1 or face possible restrictions or full-fledged bans. It's a campaign that critics are calling an attempt to exert tighter control over the internet, which they say threatens corporate and individual freedom. 

Both Google and Meta Platforms face court cases this month for repeatedly violating Russian legislation on content. The tech giants could be fined a percentage of their annual Russian revenue. 

This year, Google has already paid over 32 million roubles in fines and has significantly reduced the number of posts prohibited by Russian legislation. 

On Tuesday, the Texas jury found that YouTube’s streaming technology worked uniformly to VideoShare’s patented technology for converting a video to multiple formats and transmitting it in the format that best suits a user’s device. Google and YouTube’s claims that the patent was invalid for containing “well-understood, routine, and conventional” elements were dismissed by the jury. 

In an email on Wednesday, Google spokesperson Jose Castaneda said that the company remains confident that the patent is invalid and that it did not infringe. Castaneda also said that the company is currently evaluating its options for moving forward. 

In a statement on Wednesday, VideoShare’s attorney Michael Shore said that the company “had the facts and the law on its side.” VideoShare sued Google and YouTube back in 2019. The company claimed that YouTube’s technology for transmitting a video to a user based on what format best suits the user’s device infringed the patent. 

The ruling by the EU’s General Court comes after the European Commission said in 2017 that Google favoured its own comparison shopping services over its competitors and fined the tech giant €2.42 billion for breaching antitrust rules. The claims were later contested by Alphabet-unit Google through the EU’s second-highest court. 

In a press release on Wednesday, the court said, “The General Court finds that, by favoring its own comparison shopping service on its general results pages through more favorable display and positioning, while relegating the results from competing comparison services in those pages by means of ranking algorithms, Google departed from competition on the merits.”

Additionally, the court also confirmed the fine at €2.42, commenting in the press release that “the General Court concludes its analysis by finding that the amount of the pecuniary penalty imposed on Google must be confirmed.”

According to communications regulator Roskomndzor, Google failed to pay 32.5 million roubles ($458,100) in penalties imposed this year so far. Roskomnadzor has said it will now seek a fine of 5-20% of Google’s Russian turnover. This could total as much as $240 million. 

Recently, Russia has stepped up pressure on foreign tech companies, lowering the speed of Twitter and routinely imposing fines on other tech firms. Alphabet and Google have both been accused of caving to the Kremlin pressure after they took an anti-government tactical voting app down from their stores. 

Earlier this month, Roskomnadzor said it would ask a court to impose a turnover fine on social media giant Facebook, citing legislation cited in December 2020 by President Putin.  

Currently, Google is battling a Moscow court ruling demanding it to unblock the YouTube account of Konstantin Malofeev, a sanctioned Russian businessman, or otherwise face a compounding fine on its overall profits that would double each week. If paid, the colossal fine would force the tech giant out of business within a matter of months. 

Texas-based Profectus sued Google in 2020, claiming that its Nest Hub and Nest Hub Max, which control smart-home functions, play music, and display images digitally, infringe its patent. Profectus’ patent relates to a mountable digital photo frame.  

However, following a four-day trial, the jury found that Mountain View, California-based Google did not infringe the patent or induce others to infringe. The jury also found that five parts of the patent at issue weren’t patentable.  

U.S. District Judge Alan Albright had told the jury that it could find the patent invalid if its innovations had already been disclosed in earlier devices or publications. Several patents were identified by Google and a Sony digital photo frame was identified as relevant “prior art” to the Profectus patent. 

Profectus has also unsuccessfully sued Apple, Dell Inc, and Samsung Electronics America Inc over the patent.

David Brown, who filed the lawsuit, is jointly employed by the Alphabet Inc unit and security company Allied Universal. Brown is seeking unspecified monetary damages for alleged physical and emotional harassment at Google’s LA offices based on both his race and sexual orientation. The suit claims the harassment took place between 2014 and last year. 

Brown’s supervisor, Henry Linares, allegedly accounted for much of the harassment, including “grabbing him on the buttocks, kicking him in the groin, throwing him through a window head first and brutally grabbing his nipples." According to the filing, Linares was fired for other reasons this year. 

Over a series of messages last year regarding items missing from Google’s offices, Google's senior manager for global community operations, Rus Rossini, sent Linares the message “strip searches for all.” According to the lawsuit and a screenshot of the exchange seen by Reuters, the supervisor replied, "David is going to love that," with Rossini then saying, "Tell David to bend over." The supervisor, who shared the screenshot with Brown, responded, "hahah I'll tell him you said Hellooo."

Following the death of George Floyd last year, many major companies stepped up efforts to create more inclusive and safe workplaces, including Google. However, employees at Google, including over 2,000 who signed an open letter on the issue back in April, have said the tech giant fails to sufficiently hold perpetrators of racism and bullying to account. 

At the start of a five-day hearing, Google representatives told judges at the General Court that Android has been a huge success story of competition at work.

Back in 2018, the European Commission fined Google, claiming that, since 2011, it had used Android to thwart rivals and solidify its dominance in general internet search.

Tech giants Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook will all be required to change their business models over the next few years regardless of the court’s decision. This is to ensure a level playing field for their competitors following new rules proposed by European Union antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager. 

Commission lawyer Nicholas Khan defended Apple’s role on the grounds of its small market share compared with Android, which is found on approximately 80% of smartphones worldwide.

This particular case is the most important of the EU’s three cases against Google, due to Android’s huge market power. In the past decade, Google has racked up over Є8 billion in EU antitrust fines. 

Google was fined amid increasing international pressure on online platforms to share more of the revenue they generate from using media outlets’ news. 

Head of Google France, Sebastien Missoffe said: “We disagree with a number of legal elements, and believe that the fine is disproportionate to our efforts to reach an agreement and comply with the new law. We continue to work hard to resolve this case and put deals in place. This includes expanding offers to 1,200 publishers, clarifying aspects of our contracts, and sharing more data as requested by the French Competition Authority."

Google received its $591 million fine for failing to comply with the antitrust body’s orders on how to conduct talks with publishers. On Wednesday, the watchdog said that Google’s appeal, which will be ruled on by Paris’ court of appeal, would not hold up the fine. It remains unclear as to how the appeal process may take. 

Texas-based Data Engine Technologies LLC, a subsidiary of Acacia Research, first sued Mountain View California-based Google in 2014, claiming that its Google Sheets spreadsheet programme infringed patents related to using notebook-style tabs to arrange and display information in three-dimensional electronic spreadsheets.  

However, under the patents’ definition, Google Sheet does not count as a “three-dimensional spreadsheet”, wrote US Circuit Judge Kara Stoll for a unanimous three-judge panel. The judges also rejected Data Engine Technologies LLC’s argument for an interpretation of a “three-dimensional spreadsheet” that differed from what it raised when it was defending the patents’ validity. 

Previously, the Federal Circuit had found that the patents at issue were valid in 2018. This reversed a 2016 decision to invalidate the patents at Google’s request as the claims were directed to abstract ideas. 

The claim argued that Zoom violated its users’ privacy rights by sharing personal data with Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn, and allowing hackers to disrupt Zoom meetings in a practice known as “Zoombombing”. In the proposed class action, Zoom’s customers would either be eligible for a $25 refund or a 15% refund on their subscriptions to the video conferencing platform, depending on which sum is larger.  The preliminary settlement, which was filed on Saturday afternoon, is still to be approved by US District Judge Lucy Koh in California. 

Zoom has agreed to improve its security measures, which will include alerting users when other meeting participants use third-party apps. Zoom will also offer specialised training to employees on privacy and data handling. However, in agreeing to settle, the video conferencing platform has denied any wrongdoing, stating that the privacy and security of its users is a top priority for the company. 

As demand for video calls increased during the coronavirus pandemic, Zoom has seen profits of around $1.3 billion from Zoom Meetings subscriptions from class members. However, the plaintiffs’ lawyers suggested that a settlement of $85 million was acceptable given the litigation risks. On top of this figure, they will also seek a maximum of $21.25 million for legal fees.