Google won’t be getting any favors from Russia for a long, long time. Moscow is trying to teach them a lesson in compound interest, with a fine so huge it can’t possibly be paid. It’s a paradox which gives their AI network something to ponder, that’s for sure. What got them in a jam was censoring information for Joe Biden but not doing the same for them.
Google going gaga
Russia hit Google with a fine, for restricting Russian state media channels on YouTube. Then, not censoring information the Kremlin wanted suppressed. They didn’t pay it and interest is adding up on the judgment. It hit the news, on October 31, that the bill is up to “two undecillion roubles.” Nobody can even pronounce it.
Writing it down doesn’t help get your head around it. 20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. That’s a 2 with 36 zeroes tacked on. It’s in Roubles, which are a penny to our dollar but that doesn’t really matter much. It just means losing two of the zeros. There still isn’t enough money available on the entire planet to cover it.
Google happens to be one of the world’s wealthiest companies. Russia doesn’t actually expect their historic and excessive judgment to ever actually be paid. It’s more of a symbolic statement.
At the same time, Vladimir Putin can probably use it to leverage a settlement that will allow him to decisively end his little incursion of Ukraine. Either by buying more weapons or simply buying Ukraine.
The bean counters estimate that Google is worth somewhere around $2 trillion. That would buy a lot of artillery shells. The massively huge figure the press is shocked to be throwing around “is far greater than the world’s total GDP, which is estimated by the International Monetary Fund to be $110 trillion.”
Even the Rothschild family couldn’t come close to paying that sum. Some say Elon Musk would have to tap a loan from the Galactibank but he could probably swing it, using Earth as collateral.
Fine not excessive
As related by Putin’s “trained attack squirrel,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, the fine may seem excessive but that’s the fault of Google, not them. Claiming that defense won’t cut it in court. He personally admits that he “cannot even pronounce this number.”
Russia takes both sides of speech censorship seriously and violations of their clear and established laws were tried in their courts on the merits. A “reasonable” fine was established. Under their laws, the fine “doubles every day it is not paid.”
Peskov urged “Google management to pay attention.” Filing for bankruptcy and changing their name again won’t get the alphabet out of settling their debt. The internet megolith isn’t responding to any requests from the media.
It all started when the platform restricted “content of 17 Russian media channels on YouTube.” It began as soon as Joe Biden usurped office in 2020. Then, “it escalated after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years later.”
When “most Western companies” pulled out of Russia, due to U.S. sanctions, Google stuck around. In May, 2021, Russia’s media regulator Roskomnadzor accused the American company “of restricting YouTube access to Russian media outlets, including RT and Sputnik.” Along with supporting “illegal protest activity.”
When the July, 2022, decision came in, the fine was set at 21.1bn rouble. Surprisingly, that time they were found guilty of not censoring information. They were fined for “failing to restrict access to what it called ‘prohibited‘ material about the war in Ukraine and other content.” You can do it for Joe but not for us, they snarled. The company could have written a check and been done with it.
