A Russian court has fined Google more money than exists on earth – and the total could keep getting bigger.
A four-year court case against the US tech giant has reportedly culminated in a $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, or $20decillion, fine.
The situation began when Google banned the ultra-nationalist Tsargrad channel from YouTube in 2020, in response to US sanctions imposed against its owner, but after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 more channels were added to the banned list.
The owners of the Tsargrad station had been under US sanctions since late 2014, and in 2021 a Russian court ordered Google to return access to the blocked accounts, with the threat of a progressive fine if this was not done.
Several more YouTube channels including Sputnik, NTV, Russia 24, and eventually all Russian state channels were blocked in 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in February of that year.
Not long after, in June 2022, Google’s Russian legal entity filed for bankruptcy after reportedly paying 1billion rubles to Tsargrad, and bankruptcy was declared in November 2023.
Zvezda, a television channel owned by Putin’s ministry of defence, was one of 17 stations suing Google for removing its channels and content from YouTube.
The Russian court ruled in their favour, and the gradually increasing fines have now reached this astronomical sum.
‘Google was called by a Russian court to administrative liability under Art. 13.41 of the Administrative Offenses Code for removing channels on the YouTube platform. The court ordered the company to restore these channels,’ lawyer Ivan Morozov told state media outlet TASS.
The court imposed a 100,000 rubles per day, equivalent to about $1,025, with the total fine doubling every week.
Thanks to the compound interest Google has now racked up a fine which the Russian judge on Monday called ‘a case in which there are many, many zeroes’.
There are so many zeroes, in fact that the total fine amount completely dwarfs global GDP, which the World Bank estimates at about $100trillion, The Register reports.
But it doesn’t look like Google will actually pay the fine, or even attempt it.
On Tuesday the company posted $88billion quarterly revenue, a very long way off being able to pay the Russian fine.
Google’s parent company, Alphabet, seems pretty relaxed about the entire situation.
In its most recent earnings statement, it said: ‘We have ongoing legal matters relating to Russia.
‘For example, civil judgments that include compounding penalties have been imposed upon us in connection with disputes regarding the termination of accounts, including those of sanctioned parties.
‘We do not believe these ongoing legal matters will have a material adverse effect.’
Metro.co.uk has contacted Google for comment
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