Search engine giant Google has been fined approximately two undecillion rubles or $2.5 decillion by a court for refusing to restore the accounts of pro-Kremlin and state-run media outlets, according to a report in The Moscow Times, citing RBC news website. The bizarre amount, which exceeds the World Bank’s estimate of global GDP ($100 trillion) has been calculated after a four-year-long legal battle that started when Google-owned YouTube banned ultra-nationalist Russian channel Tsargrad in response to the US sanctions imposed against its owner.
“Google was called by a Russian court to administrative liability under Art. 13.41 of the Administrative Offenses Code for removing channels on the YouTube platform. The court ordered the company to restore these channels,” lawyer Ivan Morozov told state-run media TASS.
The ruling mandates that if the penalty is not paid within nine months, it will double every day after that. Morozov added there was no limit on this number and Google could only return to the Russian market if it complied with the court orders.
An undecillion is one followed by 36 zeros. Google’s parent company Alphabet reported revenue of more than $307 billion in 2023 which suggests that the tech giant was unlikely to cough such an astronomical amount.
Also read | How Ukraine War Has Turned Ex Google CEO Into “Licensed Arms Dealer”
Google countersues
The penalty imposed on Google comes in the backdrop of the tech behemoth filing three countersuits against Russian media outlets in August. All three suits called the Russian court judgment, which seeks to financially penalise Google and its affiliates for noncompliance, “unconscionable”.
Notably, shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2020, Google announced it was pausing its monetisation programme for Russian state-funded media that exploited and dismissed Moscow’s role in the Russia-Ukraine war. A Reuters report has claimed that Google has blocked over 1,000 YouTube channels in adherence with its content policies regarding the war.