RUSSIA has fined GOOGLE ₽2 undecillion ($2,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) or more money than actually exists on Earth, all because it's upset about some YouTube channels
RUSSIA has fined GOOGLE ₽2 undecillion ($2,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) or more money than actually exists on Earth, all because it's upset about some YouTube channels
Putin probably wants somewhere to upload his Twitch streams. Are there any chances to recover such an amount?
October 31, 2024
The total amount of claims of 17 Russian TV channels against Google has reached 2 undecillion rubles, an RBC source familiar with the dispute said.
An undecillion is a unit followed by 36 zeros.
What's the most shocking bill you've ever got in the post?
Personally, I'm still financially recovering from winter 2022, when a dalliance with an electric heater landed a fat £300 invoice on my doorstep. I write about videogames and subsist on coal soup, and there was Octopus Energy sending me a bill it presumably intended for Jeff Bezos.
Could be worse, though. I could be the guy at Google who had to open its $2.5 decillion fine from the Russian government.
Yes, that's decillion, which is a one followed by 33 zeroes. That means Russia wants Google to pay it $2,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. The number in rubles is even more absurd: ₽2 undecillion, or two followed by 36 zeroes.
For reference, the World Bank estimates the sum total of world GDP last year at $105,000,000,000,000—or one hundred and five trillion dollars.
In 2017 (a while back, but not so far back that the numbers will be radically different today), MarketWatch generously valued the sum total of anything you could conceivably call 'money on Earth'—including cryptocurrencies, above-ground gold supply, and funds invested in financial products—at several quadrillions.
If you take out all the stuff that isn't actually money (so all the crypto, gold, and financial nonsense) that becomes a paltry $90.4 trillion.
Regardless of which estimate you go with, $2.5 decillion is many orders of magnitude bigger. Almost incomprehensibly big.
In other words, Russia wants more money from Google than actually exists on Earth.
Meanwhile, Google made $307 billion in revenue last year.
If it tried to pay the fine using all that money—something it very much could not do even if it wanted to—it'd be a bit like trying to pay off your mortgage with a dime and two cents.
You may wonder how Google came to owe this ungodly sum to the Russian state.
Per RBC it's because, erm, YouTube blocked some Russian channels.
In 2020, pro-Kremlin media channels Tsargrad and RIA FAN (part of the Patriot Media Group formerly headed by Yevgeny Prigozhin, a stalwart Putin ally before he attempted to launch a coup last year and subsequently exploded in mid-air) won lawsuits against Google after the latter blocked their YouTube channels.
The punishment? Daily penalties of ₽100,000, which doubled each week.
Like grains of wheat on a chessboard, the fines soon hit such phenomenal levels of exponential growth that it became impossible for any entity on Earth—or even every entity on Earth altogether—to pay the total off.
Fortunately for Google, I think it never had any intention of doing so anyway.
The company ceased advertising in Russia after it invaded Ukraine in 2022, while its Russian subsidiary was declared officially bankrupt last year.
Google's Russian subsidiary recognised as bankrupt by court - RIA
If Google ever wants to do business in Russia again, I suspect the corporation and the Russian government will have to find some kind of accord to sweep the fine under the rug.
Either that, or Sundar Pichai needs to start checking under the couch cushions.
How Russian TV channels are suing Google
The trials of Russian media companies with Google began in 2020 after YouTube blocked the accounts of the Tsargrad TV channel and RIA FAN "in connection with violations of the legislation on sanctions and trade rules" (the owners of these resources have been under US sanctions since the end of 2014).
In August 2020, Tsargrad appealed to the Moscow Arbitration Court with a demand to cancel the blocking decision.
The defendants were the American Google LLC, the Irish Google Ireland, as well as a representative of the Russian Google LLC.
In the spring of 2021, the Moscow court ordered Google to return access to blocked accounts to Tsargrad under the threat of charging a progressive fine if this decision is not implemented.
After the start of a special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022, YouTube blocked the accounts of Sputnik, NTV and Russia 24, a little later - RT, all Russian state channels, channels of the State Television and Radio Fund, Spas, channels of the Aurora news agency, Duma TV, regional branches of the All-Russian State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company, etc.
In February 2022, the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) found Google LLC in violation of the article of the law "On Protection of Competition" due to abuse of a dominant position, since YouTube arbitrarily blocked the accounts and channels of Russian broadcasters.
The FAS demanded a fine of 2 billion rubles from the company, and later increased the amount to 4 billion rubles due to non-payment.
A month later, Google LLC partially satisfied the requirements of Tsargrad and, according to a representative of this channel, they were paid 1 billion rubles.
What is happening with Google in Russia
In June 2022, Google's Russian legal entity, Google LLC, filed for bankruptcy.
A representative of the company explained this by the fact that by that time the debts exceeded 19 billion rubles, and there were only 3.5 billion rubles worth of assets.
Among others, the register of creditors included claims from the Tsargrad TV channel, to which the Supreme Court confirmed a debt of 32.7 billion rubles in August 2024.
"The manager qualified all other TV channels as current creditors, whose claims are repaid before the register, and penalties continue to accrue."
The revenue of Google LLC in 2022 amounted to 24.17 billion rubles, a net loss of 10.2 billion rubles.
Among the requirements, among other things, there is the accrual of interest until the actual return of funds.
In addition, the manager asks to bring to justice the former top managers of Google LLC: CEO David Sneddon, managing director Yulia Solovyova and financial director Yulia Ramazanova.
He believes that they should be responsible for the company's obligations along with Google International LLC, Google LLC and Carlo Biondo, who led the company from April 2016 to February 2020.
The Russian media, in turn, appealed to the courts of Turkey, Hungary, Spain, South Africa and other countries with a request to recognize and enforce the court decisions issued against Google in Russia.
In June, the High Court of the Republic of South Africa granted a motion to seize Google's assets in that country.
This happened after the corporation did not comply with a court order from a Moscow court to restore the account of the Russian TV channel Spas on YouTube.
In August, Google itself filed lawsuits in the US and UK courts against the owners of the Russian TV channels RT, Tsargrad and Spas.
The company is trying to get a decision that will prohibit TV channels from initiating legal proceedings outside of Russia. The first hearing on this case was held at the end of September in the district court of California.
Google also filed similar lawsuits in the High Court of England and Wales.
Google's parent company, Alphabet, said in its report for the second quarter of 2024 that "Google has ongoing legal issues regarding Russia."
"For example, some of the disputes are related to the closure of accounts, including those of persons subject to sanctions. We do not believe that these legal cases will have a significant negative impact on Google's operations," the report said.
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