Russia warns Google of retaliation if RT, Sputnik search rankings lowered

Russia's state communications agency, Roskomnadzor yesterday threatened retaliation against Google as US investigations into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 federal elections continued.

The threat came after Google suggested it could lower Russian government-funded outlets RT and Sputnik in search rankings.

According to Roskomnadzor chief Alexander Zharov,  he wrote a letter to Alphabet executive chairman Eric Schmidt asking him to explain comments he made at the Halifax International Security Forum.

Zharov said ''We will receive an answer and understand what to do next ... We hope our opinion will be heard, and we won't have to resort to more serious'' forms of retaliation.

Sputnik added Zharov would see how ''discriminating'' the measure would be before deciding on a response.

Schmidt told the forum that the company planned to make RT and Sputnik less accessible through Google results, but according to the Verge, he added, ''We don't want to ban the sites; that's not how we operate.''

According to US intelligence agencies, RT and Sputnik served as arms of the Russian operation to manipulate public opinion via major web fixtures like Twitter, Facebook and Google during the election. It is however, not clear as to what degree the networks were directly involved.

Sputnik and Russia Today, or RT are both funded by the Russian government. Both websites spread misinformation and published stories that were negative toward Hillary Clinton during the 2016 US presidential election, US intelligence agencies have said.

''It's basically RT and Sputnik that are the two, and there's a whole bunch of coverage about what we're doing there,'' Schmidt said, according to a video of the talk posted on the event's Facebook page.

According to Google spokeswoman Andrea Faville the reference was to ongoing efforts announced in April to demote search results that link to low quality, false and deliberately misleading content.