[imagesource:befunky]

A bonkers ruling handed down by a Russian court has given Google nine months to pay a fine of no less than $2.5 decillion for refusing to restore the accounts of pro-Kremlin and state-run media outlets.

The bizarre judgement included an order that states that if the penalty is not paid within nine months, it will double for every day after.

The $2.5 decillion fine exceeds the World Bank’s estimate of global GDP ($100 trillion) and was calculated after a four-year-long legal battle that started when Google-owned YouTube banned ultra-nationalist Russian channel Tsargrad in response to the US sanctions imposed against its owner.

Depending on who you ask, the entire amount of notes and coins in circulation on Earth is around $80 trillion, with an additional estimated $662 trillion stored in global assets. But 2.5 decillion? That amount has 33 zeros and looks like this when written out: $2.5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.

Google will need a 2-page cheque, or get Zimbabwe to print it.

The improbable fine was reported in The Moscow Times and cited by RBC news, which quoted state-run media lawyer, Ivan Morozov, as saying “Google was called by a Russian court to administrative liability under Art. 13.41 of the Administrative Offenses Code for removing channels on the YouTube platform. The court ordered the company to restore these channels.”

Regarding the ruling that mandates that if the penalty is not paid, it will double every day after that, Morozov added there was no limit on this number and Google could only return to the Russian market if it complied with the court orders.

The penalty comes after the tech juggernaut filed three countersuits against Russian media sites in August. The Russian court judgement, which threatened to financially penalise Google for disobedience, was deemed “unconscionable” by all three suits.

The fine has been reported in so many state-controlled media outlets that it is difficult to tell if this is propaganda or a judge throwing a tantrum. In any case, Google has been inactive since 2022 after effectively pulling out of the country following Putin’s ‘special military operation’.

Russian authorities seized their local bank accounts after the move and the offshoot was essentially bankrupt, so the search giant seems pretty chill about it, saying “We do not believe these ongoing legal matters will have a material adverse effect.”

That’s corporate-speak for pfft. What are the Russians going to do? Run to the UN?

[source:ndtv]