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The Courts Google The Almighty Buck

Russian Court Fines Google $20 Decillion For Blocking Media Content (theregister.com) 263

A Russian court has fined Google an astronomical sum of around $20 decillion for YouTube's blocking of Russian media channels tied to sanctioned entities. The amount compounds weekly as Google continues to disregard the ruling. The Register reports: To put that into perspective, the World Bank estimates global GDP as around $100 trillion, which is peanuts compared to the prospective fine. Google might be one of the most valuable businesses on the planet, but even if Sundar Pichai rummages around the back of the sofa he won't be able to raise the funds to pay the penalty. The bizarre amount has been calculated after a four-year court case that started after YouTube banned the ultra-nationalist Russian channel Tsargrad in 2020 in response to the US sanctions imposed against its owner. Following Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine in 2022 more channels were added to the banned list and 17 stations are now suing the Chocolate Factory, including Zvezda (a TV channel owned by Putin's Ministry of Defence), according to local media.

"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," lawyer Ivan Morozov told state media outlet TASS. The court imposed a fine of 100 thousand rubles ($1,025) per day, with the total fine doubling every week. Owing to compound interest (Einstein's eighth wonder of the world), Google is now on the hook for an insane amount of money, or what the judge on Monday called "a case in which there are many, many zeros."

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Russian Court Fines Google $20 Decillion For Blocking Media Content

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  • Dr evil (Score:4, Funny)

    by niff ( 175639 ) <woutervannifterick@gmai l . com> on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @02:22AM (#64905353) Homepage
    I want one hundred thousand dollars! Muhahaha. No, wait.. I want 3453453457532342352463462452453467753345346 quadrillion dollars. Muhahaha.
  • by gijoel ( 628142 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @02:33AM (#64905361)
    Aimed at scaring the local oligarchs and feeble attempt to intimidate western companies. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone was sentenced, in absentia, [apnews.com] six years in prison by a Russian court.

    They have no way of enforcing their rulings. Google isn't going to pay a cent of that fine and Andy Stone isn't going to be breaking rocks in Siberia.
    • by thsths ( 31372 )

      This. As you can expect from a totalitarian system.

    • You're assuming flawless play on the part of the convicted. But as we've seen with Pavel Durov, sometimes careless billionaires can end up in the wrong country either by mistake or by arrogance.
    • Not just that, it's also exclusionary justice. The purposes of such rulings are not to punish the targets, it's to actively exclude them. It effectively keeps Google out of the Russian market through a court order.

    • They have no way of enforcing their rulings.

      Unless of course Cheeto Benito wins, I'm sure he will be happy to extradite people to Russia and his packed courts will make it possible.

    • Andy Stone isn't going to be breaking rocks in Siberia.

      That is not entirely true. If Andy ever walks into a country that has an extradition treaty with Russia, he absolutely WILL be breaking rocks in Siberia.

  • by TheNameOfNick ( 7286618 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @02:48AM (#64905375)

    Of course by acquired I mean pillaged.

  • by devlp0 ( 897273 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @02:51AM (#64905379) Journal
    To help get a feel for the enormity of it:

    https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_large_numbers

    Worthy note, a trillion is number 9 in the list whereas decillion is at number 16. Whoosh!
  • A cue to anyone... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TuringTest ( 533084 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @02:54AM (#64905381) Journal

    who uses the words "real money" together unironically.

    A good reminder that money only 'exists' so far as you can convince someone to act upon it, and then the precise numeral you put on it doesn't really matter much.

    • Money exists because it represents something of value. In the case of modern currencies it is a share in the BNP of the economy that creates that money. And that share isn't imaginary. In most countries anyway.

  • by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @03:06AM (#64905401)

    Russia is lame, they should have asked for a $1 Googol. :-)

  • by ukoda ( 537183 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @03:28AM (#64905423) Homepage
    Hope Google doesn't have any staff still in Russia as they would likely be doing jail time soon. Such a stupid number is basically a fuck you declaration of war by Russia on Google. Google really should stop pretending there is any value in playing lip service to Russia and think of a creative way to respond. Google doesn't really have any reason to pull its punches and given the money and tech behind them they should be able to come up with interesting ways to annoy Russia, what's Russia going to do, fine them another $20 Decillion?
    • by Tom ( 822 )

      Didn't Google's subsidiary in Russia file for bancruptcy in 2022 ?

      I don't think there's any staff remaining.

      Google also never was as big in Russia as in the rest of the world, thanks to Yandex, its pretty strong Russian competitor.

    • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @05:30AM (#64905589)

      Google's Russian business was wound up in 2022 and all staff not relocated out of Russia were laid off (200 of them). Incidentally Russia also seized their assets as a money grab to stop these rich companies leaving. There's nothing Google related in Russia anymore, there's no lip service required, there's simply nothing. Google has no businesses there and is unaffected and as such it doesn't warrant a response.

      Responses are for PR. There's no point in doing any.

      • by dskoll ( 99328 )

        The obvious response would be to cancel all Google and YouTube accounts that are based in Russia. Russia doesn't want Google? Fine; Google doesn't want Russia.

        • by SirSlud ( 67381 )

          I mean, sure, that's the obvious response if Google was in the business of making less money but ... it's not.

        • No, that's exactly what Russia wants. They don't want their citizens able to get information outside their controlled propaganda channels.

          They should just pretend Russia doesn't exist. Block the bots and troll farms as well as you can, but leave the rest of the information world open to the Russian citizens. If Russia doesn't like it, then let Russia do something about it. They can either block on their side (good luck) or go to war with NATO over some YouTube comments.

  • Can I pay in cookies? I have a couple duodecillion.

  • by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @04:11AM (#64905473)

    Create coin, say it's worth one dollar each, mint a hundred kajillions of them.

    For added lulz, back it against World Liberty Financial tokens.

  • by carnivore302 ( 708545 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @04:18AM (#64905479) Journal

    I googled:

    How much is a decillion?
    noun. a cardinal number represented in the U.S. by 1 followed by 33 zeros, and in Great Britain by 1 followed by 60 zeros.

    Sundar must be glad Google is a U.S. company.

  • by hyperar ( 3992287 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @04:36AM (#64905491)
    The old Alex Jones special
  • Perhaps it's a fine designed as an excuse to completely ban Google in the country and replace its services with state-owned, survelied digital products?

  • Clickbait vs reality (Score:5, Informative)

    by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @04:45AM (#64905513)

    Shit tier clickbait that is copy pasted from a X mistranslation from an X user who put the original source at the very end of the thread to ensure that as few people as possible would get to the source and fact check him.

    Original source is Astra's telegram channel. Astra is a group of Russian expat journalists in the West who try to run an independent and iirc crowdfunded news outlet aimed at Russians. Mostly successfully, they're surprisingly good at what they do considering the meager resources. If you can read Russian, they're worth following if you want independent news source collating things happening in Russia while trying to not be biased. And yes they have the badge of honor of being declared a "foreign agent" in Russian Federation.

    https://t.me/astrapress/ [t.me]

    Or

    https://astra.press/ [astra.press]

    This is the story being incorrectly translated:

    https://t.me/astrapress/67386 [t.me]

    And this is the story they are referencing:

    https://www.rbc.ru/technology_... [www.rbc.ru]

    Story references an anonymous source saying that judge involved is "considering a case with lots and lots of zeroes". It's actually just a demand made by plaintiffs. This was being mistranslated as "this has been ruled on".

    The actual fine that is in place is 100.000 roubles for every day block is in effect.

    Very prosaic compared to bullshit title.

    This is the twitter post with incorrect translation where everyone got their barely modified copypasta from:

    https://x.com/ChrisO_wiki/stat... [x.com]

    Notice that he put the source at the very bottom of the thread so as few as possible would fact check him.

    • Story references an anonymous source saying that judge involved is "considering a case with lots and lots of zeroes". It's actually just a demand made by plaintiffs. This was being mistranslated as "this has been ruled on".

      The actual fine that is in place is 100.000 roubles for every day block is in effect.

      How dare you post facts and spoil our two-minute hate!

    • by Qwertie ( 797303 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @07:34AM (#64905791) Homepage
      Maybe Google Translate is wrong, but the original source at rbc.ru says

      The Russian court imposed a fine by the Russian court due to the fact that the company did not fulfill the requirement to restore the accounts of Russian media on YouTube (video hosting is owned by Google). Victims as third parties are TV channels [...text with various unicode characters redacted...]

      According to the above claims, the court previously ordered Google to restore their accounts on YouTube, and in case of non-compliance - to recover the penalty. If the court decision is not executed within nine months from the date of its entry into force, for each day of non-execution, a fine of 100 thousand is charged. RUB. The amount doubles every week until the decision is fulfilled, without limiting the total amount of the fine.

      Another participant in the process said that in September the total amount of the fine was almost 13 decillions (a unit with 33 zeros).

      and Astra, whom you spoke of fondly, summarized this as

      Google must pay two undecillion rubles for blocking Russian state media channels on YouTube

      As RBC writes, citing a source, the judge at the hearing on the case of Google fines for blocking the channels of 17 state-owned Russian media said that he was considering "a case in which there are many, many zeros." One undecillion is a one followed by 36 zeros.

      Previously, the court ordered Google to restore Russian state channels on YouTube, and in case of refusal, to pay a fine of 100 thousand rubles for each day of non-compliance with the decision. Every week the amount of the fine doubles. So, by September the fine reached almost 13 decillion - one followed by 33 zeros.

      If Google's and ChrisO_wiki's Russian comprehension are both bad, care to enlighten us with your superior Russian translation skillz?

      • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

        IDGAF about google translate. I speak the language.

        • Admission by omission.

          • by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

            Admission of what? I literally speak the language. I have the national tests to prove it too. Literally, highest level you can study a foreign language at in Finland, they test us on it when we exit lyceum.

            I took highest level foreign language test in English and Russian. Aced both with highest available score (top 5% of all students who took that test at that level nationally that year).

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      The actual fine that is in place is 100.000 roubles for every day block is in effect.

      And that is actually believable and makes sense. Although on the low side, as that seems to be around $1000. Thanks for digging that up.

  • 20 thousand quetta dollars. We need a new prefix.
  • Pretty soon the system used to track the amount of this fine will overflow the number of bits assigned to the amount, the amount will reset and Google can pay a fine of 1 Ruble.

  • Einstein (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @05:46AM (#64905611)

    From TFS:

    Einstein's eighth wonder of the world

    This references the quote often misattributed to Einstein that, "Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it; he who doesn't, pays it."

    There is no evidence that Einstein ever said that.

    It was first (mis)attributed to him in 1983, 28 years after he died.

  • Amazing that most of the comments are from people complaining about 'censorship' at YouTube..... Based on an article about Russia, who is literally censoring YouTube. Yup, stuff on the internet is 'shittier' than it was in regards to letting everyone spew whatever nonsense they want, but that isn't censorship it's capitalism. Companies want to make money and they have decided that it isn't worth dealing with potential harm to people or any sort of civil litigation or their source of revenue drying up just
    • This isn't even related to YouTube censoring. The Russian accounts that are blocked are tied to US sanctioned entities. It would be illegal for Google, a US company, to carry that content. You can't do business with sanctioned entities period. And, although Russia (as a whole) is *not* sanctioned, many companies choose not to do business there. Not just the ones you hear about in the news who had local operations and wound them up. But many US companies won't even sell unrestricted goods to non-sancti
  • Dropped from airplanes. There will be nothing left of Russia way before the sum is paid.

  • by WaffleMonster ( 969671 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @08:20AM (#64905923)

    Years ago Zimbabwe had a 100 trillion bill worth pocket change in USD. It is a good idea to keep these things in mind when sizing data fields because you never know when some random countries currency turns to ruble.

    In this case I'm not sure what the correct move would be as there are no native types that will even represent a decillion short of resorting to floating point. You would need a big number library just to perform basic arithmetic. There are also business considerations - is it really in your interest to accommodate 2nd tier gas stations attended by alcoholics run by a small man in high heels who compares himself to Peter the Great? What are the opportunity costs? Legal? Moral? Reputational?

  • Russian court really missed a golden opportunity to just charge them one Googol

  • ...that's Scrooge McDuck territory.

  • by cpurdy ( 4838085 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @10:02AM (#64906205)
    I honestly don't understand why we still allow China and Russia to use our Internet.
    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      I hear the Chinese have developed a pretty good national firewall. You could buy it from them and install it around the US.

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