Russia has sued Google for 2 undecillion rubles, $20 decillion in USD, for refusing to pay fines for blocking 17 pro-Russian accounts on YouTube.
This penalty is significantly smaller than the current amount of money in circulation globally: about $80 trillion USD. The fine is approximately 1.9 x 10^15 times larger than the current global GDP.
Alphabet, Google’s parent company, only has a net worth of $2 trillion. If Google gave Russia everything the world produced this year, every day since the universe began, they would only have paid about three percent of the fine.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov admitted that he “can’t even pronounce this figure right,” but said that the fine was “filled with symbolism.” “Google should not be restricting the actions of our broadcasters on its platform,” he added.
TASS, a Russian media company, stated that a Russian court ordered Google to restore the blocked accounts. The court argues that Google violated the country’s administrative offenses code by banning YouTube channels.
A private complaint was placed with authorities in 2021, arguing that blocking the Tsargrad TV channel and RIA FAN from YouTube violated legislation and trade rules sanctions. This led to Tsargrad filing a lawsuit with the Moscow Arbitration Court, which resulted in a court order requiring Google to restore access to the blocked accounts under threat of escalating fines for non-compliance.
It soon became a state matter when Google blocked the Russian state news agencies RT and Sputnik after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. The fine issued originally was 2 billion rubles, then increased to 4 billion rubles after Google refused to pay.
The court stated that if Google failed to comply with the order to restore access to the blocked accounts within nine months, it would incur a penalty of 100,000 rubles for each day of non-compliance, with the amount doubling every week. As of Sept., the total fine reportedly approached nearly 13 decillion rubles. At the latest court hearing, the fine was increased to a whopping 2 undecillion rubles.
