Google has been slapped with a fine of over two undecillion rubles by a Russian court for failing to restore access to state-run and pro-government accounts on YouTube.
The story was reported by Russian state media outlet RBC, which cited an anonymous source familiar with court rulings against the tech company.
This sum, equivalent to trillions of times the global GDP, is a direct consequence of the tech giant’s compliance with US sanctions imposed on Russia.
As per RBC news, Google began accumulating daily penalties of 100,000 rubles in 2020 after the pro-government media outlets Tsargrad and RIA FAN won lawsuits against Google for blocking their YouTube channels.
Those daily penalties have doubled each week, leading to the current overall fine of around 2 undecillion rubles, the Moscow Times reported.
During the next court hearing, which took place on Monday, October 28, the judge mentioned that he was considering “a case in which there are many, many zeros.”
The Russian court imposed the said fine on Google because the company failed to comply with the requirement to restore Russian media accounts on YouTube (the video hosting service owned by Google), sources told RBC News.
The third-party victims in the case are the TV channels Zvezda, Channel One, VGTRK (TV channels Russia 1, Russia 24, etc.), Parliamentary Television, Moscow Media, TV Center, NTV, GPM Entertainment Television, Public Television of Russia, TV Channel 360, TRK Petersburg, Orthodox Television Foundation, National Sports TV Channel, Technological Company Center, as well as IP Simonyan M.S., representing the YouTube channel of TV presenter Margarita Simonyan.
“In the above-mentioned cases, the court previously ordered Google to restore their YouTube accounts, and in the event of non-compliance, to collect a penalty,” RBC News reports.
“If the court’s decision is not implemented within nine months from the date of its entry into force, a fine of 100 thousand rubles will be charged for each day of non-compliance. The amount doubles every week until the decision is implemented, with no limit on the total amount of the fine.”