UPDATE: Russia may have questions to Google if RT, Sputnik news screened

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MOSCOW/SEUL, Nov 27 (PRIME) -- Priority or counter-priority ranging of news from Russian news portals RT and Sputnik by Google News will raise many questions from the country regarding the banned content that the U.S. company allegedly cannot influence, Deputy Communications Minister Alexei Volin said on Monday.

“Priority publication in the news means violation of the technological neutrality principle, which is basic today for all market participants and system operators…Google along with other search systems, when we asked them to erase pirated content, not to allow children’s pornography or things related to drugs in searches, said they followed the technological neutrality,” Volin said. “This principle does not allow them to influence content, they said.”

Applying priority or counter-priority delivery of news infringes technological neutrality. “We’ll then have a great deal of questions to them on the author’s right, drugs, pornography, and many other issues for which we have not questioned them so far,” the official said.

Volin said referring to reciprocal measures that “we never announce in advance which surprises we’re readying for our comrades doing wrong to our mass media.”

Earlier in November, the Russian communications watchdog sent an inquiry to Google after Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Alphabet, Google’s owner, said that the company will ferret out Russian propaganda from Google News after facing criticism that Kremlin-owned media sites had been given plum placement on the search giant’s news and advertising platforms.

The Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media said earlier on Monday that Google had notified the watchdog that the U.S. giant will not revise its search algorithm just because of certain Web sites.

“We’ve welcomed a response of Google to our letter. It would be quite sad to get a confirmation that one of the world’s most information transparent companies promoting openness rejected its principles and, in fact, introduced censure,” the authority’s Deputy Director Vadim Subbotin said.

“In order to ensure that Google’s explanations do not incite doubts in Russia, we’ll monitor changes of trends of distribution of news of Russian resources in the nearest time.”

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