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Google has been fined by state-affiliated Russian TV channels for not restoring their accounts and accounts of pro-Kremlin media outlets.
Spectators held a protest against, what organisers called, the illegal blocking of Russian users’ channels on the video-streaming platform YouTube, near the US embassy in Moscow, Russia. (IMAGE: REUTERS FILE)
Google has been fined approximately 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Russian roubles (2 undecillion rubles/$2.5 decillion) for refusing to restore accounts of pro-Kremlin and Russian state-run media outlets.
Russia-based RBC news website, which first reported the development, said Google began accumulating penalties of 100,000 rubles per day since 2020 after pro-Kremlin media outlets Tsargrad and RIA FAN won lawsuits against the tech giant for blocking their YouTube channels.
The Moscow Times in its report said those daily penalties have doubled each week, resulting in a total fine of approximately 2 undecillion rubles.
Undecillion is a term used to describe a very large number. In the short scale undecillion is equal to (1036) or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (1 followed by 36 zeros).
Seventeen Russian TV channels have filed legal claims against Google, as reported by an RBC source. This includes state-run Channel One, military-affiliated Zvezda, and a company representing RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan.
YouTube, owned by Google, blocked several Russian state media outlets for their support of the invasion of Ukraine. In response, Moscow authorities imposed fines but did not block the website.