Russia has fined Google an astounding $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000—equivalent to 2.5 trillion trillion trillion dollars—following the removal of Russian TV channels from YouTube, which the government views as an affront to its propaganda efforts.
This colossal fine has ballooned over the past four years since the initiation of legal proceedings against the tech giant. According to lawyer Ivan Morozov, reported by the Russian state news agency TASS, the penalties amount to 2 undecillion rubles, or $20 decillion—a staggering 33-digit figure.
To put this in perspective, the global GDP is estimated at around $110 trillion (12-digit figure), according to the IMF.
Experts, including Roman Yankovsky from the HSE Institute of Education, have stated that Google “clearly will not pay this penalty,” and that the Russian government will struggle to recover any funds from the company. A quick analysis supports this view; Google’s parent company, Alphabet, has a market capitalization of just over $2 trillion. Even with earnings of $80.54 billion (€73.96 billion) from the last quarter, the tech giant is unlikely to be able to cover such an outrageous fine.
It’s important to note that any claims made by the Russian government are largely enforceable only within its own borders.
According to The Register, a British tech publication, this massive penalty has been calculated after a lengthy four-year court case triggered by YouTube’s ban of the ultra-nationalist Russian channel Tsargrad in 2020, a decision made in response to U.S. sanctions against its parent company.