Russian court fines Google 20 quintillion dollars

A Russian court has ordered Google to pay the equivalent of $20 quintillion in fines after the internet giant blocked 17 Russian news channels from its YouTube platform.

In numbers, it’s $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 – and the fine is doubling every week.

In 2020, Google was initially sentenced to pay 100,000 rubles a day until it stopped censoring Russian news channels, but then after more media were censored, it was also decided that the fine would be doubled every week, without any upper limit – which is why the fine is so high today, Russian RBC reports.

According to the court, Google will have to pay a fine of 40 quintillion dollars in a week, and by the end of the year it will be more than five sextillion dollars (5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000).

Although Google is one of the world’s richest companies, its parent company Alphabet “only” made around USD 170 billion in profits last year and paying the fine is therefore considered a practical impossibility, should Google agree to comply with the court’s decision.

World GDP – a drop in the ocean

By comparison, the World Bank estimates that the world’s total GDP is around $100 trillion – which is nowhere near enough money to pay Google’s fine.

Google’s parent company Alphabet has previously said it does not “believe these ongoing legal matters will have a material adverse effect” on the company’s business.

However, in August, Google filed lawsuits in US and UK courts against Russian RT, Tsargrad and Spas seeking to prohibit them from initiating legal proceedings in foreign jurisdictions based on the Moscow court’s decision, RT reports.