Google has confirmed it currently owes $2.5 decillion dollars in an unpaid fine in Russia. It doesn't plan on paying any time soon.
The fine stems from a judgment in 2020. The government run Russian news site RBC reported on the fine this week and Google has confirmed that the details are correct.
The penalty was for restricting the YouTube channels of two Russian media outlets, with those companies successfully suing Google for civil penalties under Russian law.
Further penalties were added for similar bans of Russian media sites in 2022 following the invasion of Ukraine. At that time Google said that the channels had broken rules against denying, minimalizing or trivializing violent events and that the invasion came under that description.
The original fine was just 100,000 roubles, which today is the equivalent of just over $1,000 USD. However, Russian law means the penalty doubles for each week Google fails to pay up.
The current total of the fines is $2.5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, or 2.5 trillion trillion trillion. Ironically, if Google fails to pay for a further four years, the amount will reach $1 googol, which is a huge number (1 followed by 100 zeros) that inspired the name of the company.
Google confirmed the fines in its latest quarterly report, noting "We have ongoing legal matters relating to Russia. For example, civil judgments that include compounding penalties have been imposed upon us in connection with disputes regarding the termination of accounts, including those of sanctioned parties."
Even leaving aside the ludicrous numbers, there's no real prospect of the companies collecting on the fines as Google has no meaningful presence in Russia. Its local subsidiary went bankrupt after Russian authorities took control of its bank accounts following the restrictions on state media.
This severely limits its operations in Russia. Although people there can use free services such as YouTube and the search engine, Google neither sells nor delivers ads in the country.
Should tech companies respect the law in all countries where their services are available? Was it worth Google effectively losing its Russian business to restrict the sites? Does it matter that the content was legal in the country where it was uploaded?