Russian justice accuses the American company of having deleted state channels and pro-government accounts on YouTube.
An astronomical sum. Russia has imposed a fine of 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 dollars on Google, reports the American media CNNThursday October 31, 2024.
The web giant has accumulated penalties that it has refused to pay for blocking pro-Russian channels and state accounts on YouTube. Russian justice had in fact ordered Google to restore all the platform's channels blocked since 2022, under penalty of sanctions which double every week, indicates the Russian media TASS .
A political fine
This sum reaches 2 billion billion billion billion billion rubles, that is to say two «undécillions» rubles. It far exceeds the world GDP which amounts to 110,000 billion dollars. The fine may be difficult to pay by Alphabet, Google's parent company, whose market value is $2 trillion.
According to Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, this is a symbolic political sanction. “Russian courts deliberately made such a provocative and unprecedented decision in order to position themselves politically in relation to internet platforms”explains Fyodor Kravchenko of the Collegium of Media Lawyers to the Russian economic daily Kommersant.
Google responds
Google confirmed to CNN “ongoing legal matters” linked to its activities in Russia. The company clarified that these procedures will not significantly affect its profits.
After Russia invaded Ukraine, the American company reduced its operations in Russia, but continued to offer some services. However, its Russian subsidiary went bankrupt a few months after the invasion.
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