The penalty, issued in October 2025, became clearer through appeal materials dated 29 April 2026, when Moscow City Court upheld the lower court’s ruling. The amount was not visible in the published text, but Google has previously been fined 3.8 million roubles under the same non-removal provision, part of a steady series of penalties over content that authorities say should be restricted inside Russia.
The case file identified pages in Google Maps connected with Kauffman, AlkoVilla, Alkomarket-Dostavka and Domashny Magazin, while another referenced alcohol-market listing had already disappeared from the service. Roskomnadzor, the communications and internet regulator, acted after the Federal Service for Alcohol and Tobacco Market Regulation concluded that the pages contained information about remote alcohol sales. Russian law has long barred online alcohol retailing, even as retailers have periodically pushed for controlled digital sales using age checks, licensed logistics and state tracking systems.
Google contested the ruling, arguing that Roskomnadzor had not properly notified the company of the takedown demands. The appeal court rejected that argument and left the penalty in force. The case was brought under Article 13.41 of the Code of Administrative Offences, a provision used against owners of internet resources that do not delete information when Russian law requires its removal.
The alcohol listings were not the only material cited in the proceedings. The same decision also referred to complaints involving several Google Play applications and links to books classified as extremist in Russia. That bundling of unrelated categories reflects the way administrative cases against large technology platforms are often assembled: several takedown demands, different forms of content and a single legal theory of non-compliance.
The dispute widens Russia’s pressure on foreign digital platforms. Earlier enforcement campaigns centred on social media posts, YouTube videos, opposition material, war-related content, data localisation and access to sanctioned media channels. The latest case shows that map listings, customer reviews and local business pages are also being treated as regulated information when authorities believe they facilitate prohibited activity.
The removal drive predates the court ruling. Since June 2024, Roskomnadzor has sent Google 436 notices demanding the removal of alcohol-store pages and reviews from its maps service. The notices said links to stores or comments about them had been entered into Russia’s register of prohibited online resources on the basis of court decisions connected with remote alcohol sales. Some listings have since vanished from Google Maps, although it is not always clear whether they were removed by Google, deleted by business owners or made inaccessible for other reasons.
For Moscow, the enforcement fits a wider policy of tightening control over alcohol availability. Alcohol retailing is licensed, age restricted and monitored through state systems, while regions can impose additional limits on sales hours and outlets near schools, medical facilities and other protected areas. Regulators see online listings that advertise delivery or remote ordering as a way to bypass those restrictions, particularly where sellers may lack proper licences or age verification.
For global platforms, the case raises a different problem. A map page is usually designed as a directory entry, combining address, opening hours, photographs, phone numbers, user reviews and merchant-supplied details. Authorities are increasingly treating parts of that information as potentially illegal advertising or sales facilitation, requiring platforms to police not only formal adverts but also user-generated location data. That creates a compliance burden in markets where rules on prohibited goods, political content and public morality are enforced through takedown notices backed by fines.
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