Russia Fines Google An Amount Larger Than Global GDP

A Russian court has ordered Google to pay a sum so large that even the Kremlin admitted to NBC News reporter David Nodari that it was more symbolic than an amount expected to fund its war chest.

The fine not only eclipses Google’s $2 trillion market value but also dwarfs the size of the entire global economy. I Photo: Jürgen Plasser Flickr

The fine totals around $20 decillion — 20 followed by 33 zeros — or two undecillion rubles, a 37-digit figure.

According to the Russian news outlet RBC, the fine represents the amount claimed by 17 Russian television channels and other media outlets that have been blocked from YouTube, the video platform owned by Google, due to their support of President Vladimir Putin’s administration and its invasion of Ukraine.

However, the court may be waiting indefinitely for Google to pay up.

The fine not only eclipses Google’s $2 trillion market value but also dwarfs the size of the entire global economy, which the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates at about $110 trillion — a figure with only 13 zeros.

That said, at least the fine isn’t as large as a googol, which has 100 zeros. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin selected the term for their search engine, initially aiming to organize vast amounts of information.

“While it is a specific amount, I cannot even say this number. It is rather symbolic,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov remarked on Thursday when NBC News asked how Google could be expected to settle such an astronomical fine.