Russia ‘fines Google $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000’ – more than all the money in the world

Google has been fined a whopping $20 decillion by a Russian court – more than all the money in the world, according to reports.

The tech giant is facing claims from 17 Russian TV channels after banning their accounts on YouTube, which it owns, due to international sanctions.

Pro-Kremlin channels involved in the case reportedly include Russia 1 and the platform of Russia Today host and Putin mouthpiece Margarita Simonyan.

A Moscow judge described the legal battle as “a case in which there are a lot of zeros,” according to news channel RBC.

The broadcaster reports that the amount of the fine has doubled every week since 2020 and now amounts to the equivalent of $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

Google’s recently released third quarter interim report shows total revenue at $88.2 billion – a far cry from even thinking about paying the exorbitant amount. The fine also far eclipses Google’s market value of $2 trillion.

Meanwhile, the World Bank estimates the size of the global economy at about $100 trillion, or 100 followed by 12 zeros.

That figure is at least twenty zeros short of meeting the astronomical Russian fine.

Google closed its Russian division in 2022 after Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.

Its Russian subsidiary Google LLC has declared bankruptcy, but many of its services, including its search engine and YouTube, have remained accessible to Russians.

Although the Kremlin has banned a number of platforms, including Twitter and Facebook, it has so far not blocked access to Google’s services.

However, Google remains under pressure for failing to remove content that Moscow considers illegal, and for restricting access to some Russian media on YouTube.

The video streaming site banned a number of pro-Moscow pages four years ago, including the propaganda channel Tsargrad TV, owned by oligarch Konstantin Malofeev.

Google closed its Russian division in 2022 after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine

Google was fined 100,000 rubles per day and warned that the amount would double every 24 hours if it was not paid.

In Russian currency, the fine now amounts to more than two billion rubles, a 36-digit figure, lawyer Ivan Morozov told state news agency TASS.

Despite the staggering amounts demanded by judges in Moscow, Google has remained defiant.

The company said in its latest earnings statement: ‘We do not believe these ongoing legal matters will have a material adverse effect.’