Google fined US$20 decillion by Russian court amid YouTube dispute

A Russian court has imposed an unprecedented fine on U.S. tech giant Google, citing the blocking of certain YouTube channels.

This fine, reported by Russian business newspaper RBC, has now reached over two undecillion rubles—equivalent to approximately US$20 decillion, a figure with 34 zeros.

This sum far surpasses the global total wealth of $477 trillion and last year’s worldwide GDP of around $105 trillion, as recorded by the Boston Consulting Group and the World Bank respectively.

Alphabet, Google’s parent company, holds a valuation of about $2 trillion, making the fine astronomically larger—around 10 billion trillion times its value.

Analysts and experts have noted the absurdity of this amount, which could soon approach a googol, the number that inspired the search engine’s name, equating to 1 followed by 100 zeros.

Dmitry Peskov, spokesperson for Russian President Vladimir Putin, acknowledged the symbolic nature of the penalty during a press conference on Thursday.

“I actually can’t even pronounce that number,” Peskov remarked. He added that the fine served as an emblematic demonstration of Russia’s grievances against Google, reflecting the importance of compliance with the Moscow Arbitration Court’s order to restore access to the disputed YouTube channels.

Google, which did not issue a public response to the fine, has seen significant challenges in Russia over the past years. The penalty’s extraordinary growth stems from its design—a compounding daily increase in cases of noncompliance without any legal cap.

This follows a lawsuit initiated in 2020 by a blocked channel aiming to circumvent U.S. sanctions, long predating the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The lawsuit gained momentum when 17 affected channels joined forces against Google’s entities in the United States, Ireland, and Russia.

However, relations between Russian authorities and Western tech companies severely worsened after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. In the aftermath, Google’s Russian subsidiary filed for bankruptcy, citing the seizure of its local assets in response to these legal challenges.

YouTube and other platforms responded to the geopolitical tensions by blocking certain Russian state media from audiences outside the country.

According to Google’s Threat Analysis Group, the platform has banned over 3,000 pro-invasion channels this year, including those linked to Russian public figures.

Moscow’s media regulatory agency, Roskomnadzor, has frequently pressured Google to lift restrictions on specific YouTube accounts and penalized the company for non-compliance in removing or restoring various content types.

Despite these conflicts, YouTube remained accessible in Russia even after other major Western social media platforms were restricted post-invasion.

However, recent user reports indicate that accessing and streaming videos on YouTube has become increasingly problematic, with experts attributing these disruptions to state-imposed censorship.

The Russian government, in contrast, has suggested that Google itself is responsible for the service difficulties.