The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation has refused to review Google’s appeal and upheld the requirement for the company’s Russian «subsidiary» to pay an astronomical sum to several Russian TV channels. This is a fine that is tens of thousands of times larger than the size of the global economy.
The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation has refused to review Google’s appeal and upheld the requirement for the company’s Russian «subsidiary» to pay an astronomical sum to several Russian TV channels. This is a fine that is tens of thousands of times larger than the size of the global economy.
According to Economic Truth, the judge saw no reason to refer the complaint to a judicial panel. As a result, the fine, tied to the dispute over access to a number of YouTube channels blocked in the Russian Federation, remained in force.
As Russian media explain, the final figure was formed as a court penalty for failure to comply with the decision to restore access to these channels. The charges were capped in the spring of 2025, fixing the total at 91.5 quintillion rubles, which is estimated at approximately $1.2 quintillion.
For scale: the amount is orders of magnitude larger than estimated global GDP, which is measured in tens of trillions of dollars. Therefore, the practical meaning of such a «fine» is questionable, but the very mechanism of calculation and the use of courts as a tool of pressure are indicative.
The conflict between Russian broadcasters and Google escalated after their YouTube accounts were blocked in 2020 and 2021. Russian courts then began to «increase» the amount of sanctions through a penalty that increased according to a formula that quickly turned the numbers into pure mathematics with no connection to reality.
Previously, dev.ua wrote about how an arbitration court in the Russian Federation limited the fine that Google must pay for blocking YouTube channels of Russian propagandists. It doubled every week and in February reached 2.86 duodecillion rubles (a number with 39 zeros).
