By our Reporter
Google has been fined in Russia for removing Russian TV channels from YouTube.
The tech giant was fined a staggering 20 decillion dollars, which is more than all the money in the world.
The company is facing claims from 17 Russian TV channels after banning their accounts on YouTube, which it owns, as a result of international sanctions.
Pro-Kremlin channels involved in the case reportedly include Russia 1 and the platform belonging to Russia Today presenter and Putin mouthpiece Margarita Simonyan.
According to news report, Google began accumulating daily penalties of 100,000 rubles in 2020 after the pro-government media outlets Tsargrad and RIA FAN won lawsuits against the company for blocking their YouTube channels.
Those daily penalties have doubled each week, leading to the current overall fine of around 2 undecillion rubles.
Undecillion is a number equal to 1 followed by 36 zeros. Google, whose parent company Alphabet reported a revenue of more than $307 billion in 2023, is unlikely to ever pay the incredibly high fine.
YouTube blocked several Russian state-run media outlets over their support of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Authorities in Moscow retaliated with fines but stopped short of blocking the website.
Google’s Russian subsidiary filed for bankruptcy in the summer of 2022 and was officially declared bankrupt last fall.
Alphabet Inc’s Google had earlier halted advertising in Russia to comply with Western sanctions over the war in Ukraine.