A Russian court fined Google more than the world GDP

• A Russian court fined Google for failing to reinstate YouTube accounts linked to Russian TV channels.
• The penalty is approximately $20.6 trillion – a figure many orders of magnitude higher than global GDP.
• Google's Russian company filed for bankruptcy in 2022, leaving few options left to receive the payments.

A legal battle between Google and Russia over the suspension of YouTube accounts has resulted in a fine so large it exceeds all the money in the world.

Ivan Morozov, a Moscow-based lawyer, told state news agency TASS that a Russian court had ordered the tech giant to restore Russian media accounts on YouTube, a company owned by Google.

He said Google's failure to do so has resulted in a fine that has regularly doubled for years.

There is no upper limit on the total amount, the lawyer said.

Morozov, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, said the cumulative amount has now reached two billion rubles – an almost unfathomable figure.

At the current exchange rate, the penalty is about $20.6 trillion.

A decillion is a number followed by 33 zeros – which in this case brings the fine to $20,604,600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

To put this in perspective, global GDP is equivalent to about $105 trillion, a tiny fraction of the penalty.

It is unlikely that Google could or would pay such an amount, which according to RBK, a Russian business media company, is related to legal claims by more than a dozen Russian TV channels over the suspension of YouTube accounts.

Google suspended the Russian accounts to comply with U.S. sanctions, according to court filings reviewed by Bloomberg in 2021.

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Nigel Gould-Davies, senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told BI in a statement that the size of the fine was “clearly crazy” and “absurd.”

“Even if Google had given Russia everything the world has produced every day since the beginning of the universe this year, it would have only paid about 3% of that fine,” Gould-Davies wrote on X.

He likened it to “putting a dead person on trial” – fitting since Google has no active presence in Russia and has few assets to claim.

In 2022, Google's Russian legal division, Google LLC, filed for bankruptcy and authorities seized its bank accounts, although free services continue to be offered in the country.

Google's parent company Alphabet apparently does not expect the legal dispute to have any significant impact.

The company regularly references the cases in its quarterly earnings reports. Business Insider first mentioned it in the first quarter of 2022.

Alphabet's earnings report for the third quarter of this year, released on Tuesday, mentioned “ongoing legal matters” related to Russia.

It pointed to civil rulings that provide for “multiple penalties” imposed “in connection with account termination disputes,” including against people on sanctions lists.

“We do not believe these ongoing legal matters will have a material adverse impact,” the report said, an assessment consistent with previous reports.

Google did not respond to BI's request for comment.