A court in Moscow Russia has levied on Google an unprecedented fine of $20 Decillion ($20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000), an amount that surpasses all the money in the world put together. Google’s crime? Sanctioning YouTube channels of pro-Russia media, and failing to delete content that Moscow deems illegal. Now who does that? Only Putin…
This comic-sounding penalty results from a lawsuit filed by 17 Russian TV channels, including pro-Kremlin outlets Russia 1 and Margarita Simonyan’s platform, after Google banned their YouTube accounts due to international sanctions.
The fine, has been described by the court judge as “a case with many, many zeros”, and has been doubling doubled weekly since 2020, and is now up to the equivalent of $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (Are you catching the headache yet?)
The global economy (all money in the world put together) — estimated at $100 trillion ($100,000,000,000,000), falls short of the fine money by 20 zeros!
Google closed down its Russian division in 2022 following Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. Its Russian subsidiary, Google LLC, declared bankruptcy, but many of its services, including its search engine and YouTube, have remained accessible to Russians.
While the Kremlin has banned some platforms, including Twitter and Facebook, it has so far stopped short of blocking access to Google’s services. Google has continued to face pressure for both failing to delete content Moscow deems illegal and restricting access to some Russian media on YouTube.
The video streaming site has banned several pro-Moscow pages, including (propaganda) channel Tsargrad TV, owned by oligarch Konstantin Malofeev, four years ago. Google was fined a daily penalty of 100,000 rubles and warned that the amount would double every 24 hours if unpaid.
In Russian currency, the fine now amounts to more than 2 undecillion rubles, a 36-digit figure, lawyer Ivan Morozov told the state-owned TASS news agency.
Despite the dizzying sums being demanded by judges in Moscow, Google has remained defiant. The company said in its last earnings statement: “We do not believe these ongoing legal matters will have a material adverse effect.”
It’s unlikely Google will ever get to the point of paying the headache of-$20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. Would you pay that fine if it were you?
