Russia fines Google $2 decillion – no such money exists
31 October 2024 16:45
The Russian state is demanding that Google pay more than 2 undecillion rubles (2 with 36 zeros) for blocking pro-Russian channels on YouTube. In US dollars, this amount is $20 decillion – a figure of 2 with 34 zeros, reports "Komersant Ukrainian" citing CNN.
20 decillion is 20 billion trillion trillion. There is no such money in the whole world.
For comparison, the global gross domestic product is about $110 trillion, and the market value of Alphabet (Google’s parent company) is about $2 trillion.
According to the Russian news agency TASS, a Russian court previously ordered Google to restore YouTube channels that have been blocked since 2022 and set a fine for failure to comply with this requirement. In case of non-compliance, the fine will double every week.
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Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov admitted that he could not pronounce the figure correctly, but called it “symbolic.” He said that Google “should not restrict the actions of Russian broadcasters on its platform.”
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Google scaled back its operations in Russia, but did not stop them completely. Many of the company’s services, including search and YouTube, remain available in the country.
Several months after the war began, Google’s Russian office filed for bankruptcy and suspended most commercial operations after the government blocked its bank accounts.
In the quarterly report, Google refers to “ongoing legal proceedings” in Russia, but claims that they will not have a material adverse effect on its financial performance.
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