The $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 fine is a response to a lawsuit by Russian channels blocked on YouTube and is largely symbolic.
Google has been fined $20.6 trillion by a Russian court for banning pro-Kremlin channels on YouTube.
RBC reported on October 29, citing a source familiar with the Russian court, that judges have decided to fine Google 20 trillion rubles (about $20.6 trillion) because the technology group has blocked pro-Russian accounts on the YouTube platform for many years. The ruling was made in a case filed by 17 Russian TV channels against Google four years ago.
Accordingly, Google began to pay a progressive fine of about $1,000 per day, doubling every week, after the Tsargrad and RIA FAN news agencies won a lawsuit against the group in 2020 for blocking their YouTube channels.
The fine imposed on Google is higher than the combined GDP of the world, which is $100 trillion, according to World Bank estimates.
The Russian news agency TASS quoted lawyer Ivan Morozov as confirming the information. “The court decided that Google should be fined under Article 13.41 of the Law on Administrative Violations for blocking channels on YouTube. The court also ordered Google to restore these channels,” Morozov said.
According to the ruling, Google can only return to the Russian market if it complies with the fine. If it fails to pay the fine within nine months, the fine will double every day, with no limit. Google’s parent company Alphabet reported revenue of more than $307 billion in 2023.
YouTube, owned by Google, has blocked many Russian media channels since the start of the war in Ukraine. Moscow authorities responded with fines but did not block Google.
Among the 17 Russian media outlets suing Google are the state-run Channel One, the Russian military-linked Zvezda TV station and a company representing RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan.
Google’s Russian subsidiary declared bankruptcy in 2023. Google also stopped advertising in Russia under Western sanctions.