A Russian court fined Google two undecillion roubles, which is two plus 36 zeroes, for not letting Russian state media stations show on YouTube.
That means the tech giant has been told to pay twenty billion dollars.
That is a lot more than the $2 trillion that Google is worth, even though Google is one of the richest companies in the world.
While the International Monetary Fund says the world’s GDP is $110 trillion, this amount is many times bigger.
The fine has grown so huge because, as the state news service Tass pointed out, it is going up so quickly all the time.
Tass says Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for the Kremlin, said he “cannot even pronounce this number” but told “Google management to pay attention.”
The company hasn’t said anything in public or answered the BBC’s request for a remark.
A nice mess
RBC, a Russian news outlet, says that Google was fined because 17 Russian media channels’ material was blocked on YouTube.
Even though this began in 2020, it got worse after Russia invaded Ukraine in full two years later.
As a result, most Western companies pulled out of Russia, and doing business there was also made very hard by sanctions.
Europe also banned Russian media sites, which made Moscow take action in response.
Google’s local branch was declared bankrupt in 2022, and the company no longer provides any business services, like ads, in Russia.
Its goods are not completely banned in the country, though.
This is the latest thing that has made things worse between Russia and the US tech giant.
Roskomnadzor, Russia’s media watchdog, said in May 2021 that Google had blocked Russian media outlets, like RT and Sputnik, from accessing YouTube and was supporting “illegal protest activity.”
Then, in July 2022, Russia fined Google 21.1bn rubles (£301m) for not blocking what it called “prohibited” information about the war in Ukraine and other things.
Russia has almost no press freedom. There aren’t many independent news outlets, and people’s right to free speech is badly limited.
