The staggering fine of $20 decillion Google now owes to Russian broadcasters who were banned from YouTube is “symbolic” and intended to push the company to rectify the issues it has with them, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.
The eye-watering sum is supposed to make the company “pay attention” to the problem and fix it, Peskov suggested on Thursday.
“This is a specifically formulated sum, I actually can’t even pronounce this figure, but it is rather filled with symbolism,” he said, explaining that Google “should not limit the actions of our broadcasters on a whim.”
The colossal figure was first reported by RBK news outlet on Tuesday and stems from a series of lawsuits filed against Google by 17 Russian broadcasters which accused the tech giant of unlawfully blocking content and taking down their YouTube channels.
Back in October 2022, the Moscow Arbitration Court ordered Google to restore YouTube access to the blocked Russian channels, placing a compounding penalty of 100,000 rubles per day ($1,028) for non-compliance on the company. The penalty doubles every week, according to the court’s ruling. With no cap imposed on the fine, it has now reached the $20.6 decillion mark and is set to grow even further.
The dispute between the tech giant and Russian broadcasters dates back to 2020, when the company took down the YouTube channels of Tsargrad TV and RIA news agency, citing US sanctions against their owners.
Things got worse for Russian outlets after the conflict between Moscow and Kiev escalated in February 2022, with dozens of other news channels blocked on the platform, including those of RT and Sputnik. A number of broadcasters subsequently sued the tech giant, winning the case in the Moscow Arbitration Court.
What’s the Beef About?
17 Russian television channels’ compensatory demands toward Google have reached 2 undecillian rubles (a 2 followed by 36 zeros), equivalent to about 20 decillion dollars (or $20,560,840,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to be exact). Here's what they want from the American tech giant.
The channels’ beef with Google relates to the blocking of their YouTube accounts, with the case affecting federal television channels, including Channel One, Russia 1, Russia 24, the Defense Ministry’s Zvezda TV, as well as smaller channels, from Parliamentary Television and Moscow Media to TV-Center, NTV, 360 TV, the Orthodox Television Foundation, the National Sports Channel and the personal channel of Sputnik and RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan.
A Russian court previously ordered Google to restore media companies' channels, ruling that if this is not done in a nine-month period, a fine of 100,000 rubles ($1,030 US) would be slapped on the company daily, and double every week until Google complied, with no limit on the total fine.
Russian media first started a series of legal battles with Google in 2020, after YouTube blocked the accounts of Tsargrad TV and RIA Fan over alleged “sanctions legislation and trade rules”-related violations. Tsargrad took Google to court, with a judge ordering the company to unblock the account or face escalating fines.
In 2022 and the start of the conflict in Ukraine, YouTube blocked Sputnik, RT, NTV and Rossiya 24’s accounts, followed by others, prompting Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service to slap Google with 4 billion rubles ($41.1 million US) in fines.
In June of 2022, Google’s Russia-based entity filed for bankruptcy, citing debts in excess of 19 billion rubles and assets of only 3.5 billion rubles. A court declared the subsidiary bankrupt in late 2023.
The affected Russian media channels have also taken Google to court in other countries to enforce Russian court decisions. In June 2024, the High Court of South Africa granted a Russian request to seize Google’s assets in that country. Google shot back in August with lawsuits in US and British courts against Russian media to try to block them from initiating further legal proceedings outside Russia.
Fun fact: Google's name itself is a reference to an astronomically large figure - a googol, which is a 1 followed by 100 zeros.
Google parent company Alphabet confirmed in a Q2 2024 earnings report that it’s facing “ongoing” legal issues relating to Russia, assuring shareholders this would not significantly affect their business.
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