BRICS Member Russia has fined Google $20 decillion dollars, more than all of the money in the world, according to a Wednesday report. 17 Russian TV channels went to a Russian court to bring claims against the tech giant for blocking pro-Kremlin content. Google recently banned Kremlin accounts on YouTube, which it owns, as a result of international sanctions.
A Moscow judge described the legal battle as ‘a case in which there are many, many zeros’, according to news outlet RBC. RBC reports that fines against Google have been accumulating for weeks, doubling every week since 2020. Now, the fines from the BRICS member are up to the equivalent of $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, more than the global GDP.
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.
Furthermore, 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.”
