A Russian court reportedly imposed a fine on Google, amounting to around $2.5 decillion, or two undecillion rubles, it refused to restore the accounts of pro-Kremlin and state-run media outlets. An undecillion is one followed by 36 zeros.
As per RBC news, Google began accumulating daily penalties of 100,000 rubles in 2020 after the pro-government media outlets Tsargrad and RIA FAN won lawsuits against Google for blocking their YouTube channels. Those daily penalties have doubled each week, leading to the current overall fine of around 2 undecillion rubles, the Moscow Times reported.
What led to the bizarre amount of fines on Google?
As per RBC news, during the next court hearing, which took place on Monday, October 28, the judge mentioned that he was considering “a case in which there are many, many zeros.”
The Russian court imposed the said fine on Google because the company failed to comply with the requirement to restore Russian media accounts on YouTube (the video hosting service owned by Google), sources told RBC news.
According to the report, the third-party victims in the case were the TV channels Zvezda, Channel One, VGTRK (TV channels Russia 1, Russia 24, etc.), Parliamentary Television, Moscow Media, TV Center, NTV, GPM Entertainment Television, Public Television of Russia, TV Channel 360, TRK Petersburg, Orthodox Television Foundation, National Sports TV Channel, Technological Company Center, as well as IP Simonyan M.S., representing the YouTube channel of TV presenter Margarita Simonyan.
In these, the court had earlier ordered Google to restore their YouTube accounts. It was reported that a penalty would be collected in the event of non-compliance.
“If the court’s decision is not implemented within nine months from the date of its entry into force, a fine of 100,000 rubles will be charged for each day of non-compliance. The amount doubles every week until the decision is implemented, with no limit on the total amount of the fine,” the local report stated.
In September, the total fine was almost 13 decillion (one followed by 33 zeros), sources reportedly said.
The Russian media companies’ lawsuits with Google began in 2020 after YouTube blocked the accounts of the Tsargrad TV channel and RIA FAN “in connection with violations of sanctions legislation and trade rules” (the owners of these resources have been under US sanctions since late 2014).
