The court imposed the fine, which is doubling every week, following lawsuits brought by Russian TV channels blocked from YouTube.
A Russian court has ordered Google to fork over a calculator-breaking sum of money to more than a dozen TV channels whose programming the tech company blocked from appearing on YouTube.
The fine has been accruing since 2020, when Russian outlets Tsargrad TV and RIA FAN sued Google for blocking their content, according to Novaya Gazeta. Since then, the penalty has continued to grow as 15 other channels, including Kremlin-backed networks, won court cases against Google. “As of Tuesday, the fine totaled 2 undecillion rubles (that’s 2 followed by 36 zeros), which is equivalent to about $20 decillion (2 followed by 34 zeros) U.S. dollars.
Given that Google has gone years without paying the fine, it’s unlikely the company is going to open its checkbook now that the numbers are getting really goofy. And even if it wanted to, Google couldn’t cover the bill. As the fourth most valuable company in the world, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has a market capitalization of only $2 trillion.
Ukrainian news agency RBC-Ukraine reported that the court fine is doubling every week that Google fails to pay. At that rate, it will take roughly 219 weeks before Google owes $1 googol (1 followed by 100 zeros).
Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
While the current fine may be patently unrealistic, The Russian TV channels’ court cases against Google have had real consequences for the company. Google’s subsidiary declared bankruptcy in 2022 after courts seized more than $100 million in assets from its Russian accounts, The Telegraph reported. Google has countersued several of the Russian outlets to prevent them from pursuing the company’s assets in other countries, including South Africa, Turkey, Serbia, and Kyrgyzstan.
The YouTube block of Tsargrad TV in 2020 came after the U.S. sanctioned its owner, Konstantin Maolfeyev, a Russian oligarch who the Department of Justice said was instrumental in the country’s 2014 and 2022 invasions of Ukraine. RIA FAN was set up by Yevgeny Prigozhin, according to Novaya Gazeta, who was the co-founder of the mercenary Wagner Group and originally a staunch backer of Vladamir Putin before leading a mutiny against the Russian leader last year that ended when a jet carrying Prigozhin and nine others mysteriously crashed.
Since then, YouTube has blocked hundreds of channels affiliated with Russia-owned news outlets like RT to comply with U.S. sanctions. The company has also said that some Russian channels have been blocked because they posted content that “minimizes or trivializes well-documented violent events,” referring to Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.