Russia has fined Google a world record-breaking fine of $2.5 decillion after years of refusing to restore the accounts of pro-Kremlin and state-run media outlets, the RBC news website reported, citing an anonymous source familiar with court rulings against the tech company.
According to RBC’s sources, Google began accumulating daily penalties of 100,000 rubles in 2020 after the pro-government media outlets Tsargrad and RIA FAN won lawsuits against the company for blocking their YouTube channels.
Those daily penalties have doubled each week, leading to the current overall fine of around 2 undecillion rubles.
A decillion is a number that is represented as 1 followed by 33 zeros in the United States or 60 zeros in the United Kingdom.
An undecillion is a number equal to 1 followed by 36 zeros in the US or 66 zeros in the UK.
For context, the total private wealth in the world is estimated at $452 trillion. A trillion is a number represented by 1 followed by 12 zeros.
Google, whose parent company Alphabet reported a revenue of more than $307 billion in 2023, is unlikely to ever pay the incredibly high fine.
A total of 17 Russian TV channels have filed legal claims against Google, according to one of RBC’s sources. Among them are the state-run Channel One, the military-affiliated Zvezda broadcaster and a company representing RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan.
YouTube, which is owned by Google, blocked several Russian state-run media outlets over their support of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Authorities in Moscow retaliated with fines but stopped short of blocking the website.
Google’s Russian subsidiary filed for bankruptcy in the summer of 2022 and was officially declared bankrupt last fall. Alphabet Inc’s Google had earlier halted advertising in Russia to comply with Western sanctions over the war in Ukraine.
Google closed down its Russian division in 2022 following Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. Its Russian subsidiary, Google LLC, recently declared bankruptcy.
However, 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 despite the fines.
Google was fined a daily penalty of 100,000 rubles by Russia and was warned that the amount would double every 24 hours if it was not paid. 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.
Google has remained adamant that it will not pay these fines, and the legal battle will conclude. The company said in its last earnings statement, ‘We do not believe these ongoing legal matters will have a material adverse effect.”
