Russian court fines Google $20 decillion – if we simplify, 2.5 trillion billion trillion US dollars: this is the tidy sum that Moscow is asking Google to pay after the Mountain View company took action against Putin’s propaganda.
Google has been fined in Russia for removing Russian TV channels (all more or less under Kremlin control) from its owned YouTube video service.
Russian court fines Google $20 decillion The amount of the fine, however, reached an unprecedented level in the last four years, since the start of the legal proceedings initiated in Russia against the technology giant.
According to lawyer Ivan Morozov, cited by the Russian news agency TASS (state agency), the violations cost the tech giant 2 undecillion rubles, or 20 decillion dollars (a figure with 33 zeros).
For comparison, global GDP is estimated at $110,000 trillion (12-zero figure), according to the IMF.
Another expert cited by the Russian news agency, Roman Yankovsky of the HSE Education Institute, told TASS that Google “clearly will not pay this penalty, and the Russian Federation will not be able to recover this money from the company.
A brief calculation shows that he is right. Alphabet, Google’s holding company, has a market capitalization of just over $2 trillion. Even with profits of $80.54 billion (73.96 billion euros) last quarter , the tech giant does not appear to have the means to pay the fine.
The complaints filed by the Russian government are only viable at the national level.
According to British technology newspaper The Register, the amount was calculated following a four-year legal proceeding that was triggered by YouTube banning Russian ultranationalist channel Tsargrad in 2020, in response to American sanctions imposed on its parent company.
Google did not immediately respond to Euronews Business’ request for comment.
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