On October 31st, Caixin News Agency reported that Russia has imposed an astronomical fine on tech giant Google, which cannot be described in common units. The fine is as high as $200000000000 followed by 33 zeros, totaling 35 digits.
Last year, the total GDP of the world was about $110 trillion, which is negligible compared to Russia's fine on Google.
This staggering fine is the result of a four-year court case. In 2020, Google's video website YouTube banned the Russian media account Tsarrad TV. Tsarrad subsequently filed a lawsuit in Russia and won the case.
After the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in February 2022, YouTube banned a large number of Russian media accounts in order to cooperate with the Western sanctions against Russia, and some of them also initiated lawsuits against Google.
The Russian court has demanded that Google restore these accounts and impose a fine of 100000 rubles (approximately 1029 US dollars) for every day Google closes these accounts. If it's only at this point, then the fine amount is still within a reasonable range.
However, the Russian authorities have stipulated that if Google fails to pay the fine within the prescribed deadline, the fine will double every week, and the total amount of the fine will snowball exponentially, resulting in the astronomical amount of fines that Google currently owes.
Google certainly has no possibility of paying this fine, as the company has actually withdrawn from the Russian market. After the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Google closed its Russian branch and its subsidiary declared bankruptcy. YouTube is not officially blocked in Russia, but its availability is not stable.
Russian media companies have filed lawsuits against Google in South Africa, Türkiye, Hungary and Serbia to enforce the fines imposed by the Russian authorities. These countries have good relations with Russia.
Kremlin spokesman Peskov responded to the matter on Thursday, saying, "Although this is a specific amount, I cannot even say the number. On the contrary, it is full of symbolic significance. In fact, this should be a reason for Google's management to pay attention to and solve the problem, which is what the company can do well