A Russian court hit Google with a fine larger than the world’s GDP

• A Russian court fined Google for failing to restore YouTube accounts linked to Russian TV channels.
• The fine is about $20.6 decillion – a figure many orders of magnitude beyond the world’s GDP.
• Google’s Russian unit filed for bankruptcy in 2022 in a major exodus from Russia, leaving few ways to extract payment.

A legal dispute between Google and Russia over suspended YouTube accounts has resulted in a fine so large that it exceeds all the money on Earth.

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

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

There is no cap on the total, the lawyer said.

Morozov, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, said that the cumulative amount has now reached 2 undemillion rubles – an almost unfathomable figure.

At the current exchange rate, the fine is equivalent to around 20.6 decillion dollars.

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

To put this into perspective, the world’s GDP equates to about $105 trillion, a tiny fraction of the fine.

It is unlikely that Google could or would pay such an amount, which RBKa Russian business media outlet, says it relates to legal claims filed by more than a dozen Russian television channels for the suspension of YouTube accounts.

According to court documents reviewed by Bloomberg in 2021suspended Google accounts to comply with US sanctions.

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

“So even if Google gave Russia everything the world produced this year, every day since the universe began, it would only have paid about 3% of this fine.” Gould-Davies wrote on X.

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

In 2022, Google’s Russian legal arm, Google LLC, filed for bankruptcy and authorities seized its bank accounts, although free services continue to operate in the country.

Google’s parent company, Alphabet, doesn’t seem to think it will have a significant impact.

It has regularly referred to the cases in its quarterly earnings reports. Business Insider found the first mention in Q1 of 2022.

In its Q3 2024 earnings report released Tuesday, Alphabet wrote of “ongoing legal matters” related to Russia.

It referred to civil judgments that include “composite penalties” imposed “in connection with account termination disputes,” including those of individuals on sanctions lists.

“We do not believe that these ongoing legal matters will have a material adverse effect,” the report said – an assessment in line with previous reports.

Google did not respond to a request for comment from BI.