A Russian court on Wednesday slapped Google with a fine of $20 decillion dollars for refusing to run propaganda from Russian state media. Twenty decillion would be a two followed by 34 zeros, a sum exceeding the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the entire planet.
NBC News noted that a decillion is less than a googol, which has 100 zeroes, and is the number from which Google draws its name. This seems like a missed opportunity by the Russian court. A decillion dollars is still far larger than Google’s entire market capitalization, which stands at a mere $2.1 trillion.
“It’s the kind of fine you might want to pay in installments,” NBC quipped.
“Although it is a specific amount, I cannot even say this number, it is rather filled with symbolism,” admitted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Thursday.
“The company should not restrict our broadcasters on their platform. This should be a reason for the Google leadership to pay attention to this and improve the situation,” he said.
The Russian fine is not arbitrary. It is the sum demanded by 17 Russian state media organizations after Google blocked their content, including fines of about a thousand dollars a day imposed since Google’s earliest ban on Russian propaganda, which involved channels belonging to the late mercenary kingpin Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Prigozhin was aboard an aircraft that mysteriously exploded in August 2023 after he became opposed to Russian President Vladimir Putin, but the other Russian state TV executives are still in Putin’s good graces, so the Russian court decided to send a message on their behalf with an absurdly large judgment in their favor.
The judge hinted that a monster judgment against Google was coming earlier this week when he said the case would include “many, many zeroes.” The already astronomical sum will ostensibly begin doubling every day if Google does not pay up within nine months. Google is barred from Russia’s backwater Internet until it satisfies the court.
Google’s YouTube service suddenly became inaccessible in Russian on August 8, for reasons that have not been clearly explained. Russian lawmakers previously threatened to throttle YouTube’s speed by up to 70 percent because it allegedly “violates and ignores the law with impunity.”