Putin’s favorite singer Shaman at an organized protest against YouTube bans.Bild: imago-images.de
The American video platform YouTube is loved and hated in Russia. Apparently there’s a hefty bill waiting in Moscow…
The Internet company Google has in Russia Fines of 2 sextillion rubles accumulated. This is reported by the Russian exile newspaper “The Moscow Times”, citing a Russian media report from this week.
In the English report there is talk of an “undecillion”, in German it is a sextillion or 1000 quintillion. The power notation is 1036.
It is unlikely that Google, whose parent company Alphabet reported sales of more than $307 billion in 2023, will ever pay the incredibly high fine, they say. In fact, the theoretical sum far exceeds the total value of all assets on earth.
Ad-free YouTube
The reason for the immense fine: Starting in 2020, Russian state propaganda media were blocked on the video platform YouTube, which belongs to Google, including an ultranationalist TV station and an organization close to Yevgeny Prigozhin. They then sued Google.
According to a source, a total of 17 Russian TV channels are said to have filed claims in court. This also includes a company owned by Putin confidant and head of RT (Russia Today) Margarita Simonyan.
The authorities in Moscow responded with fines, but did not block YouTube. As the Moscow Times report shows, the amount for Google initially amounted to 100,000 rubles per day – with it doubling every week if it was ignored. This led to an exponential increase.
At this rate, it will be approximately 219 weeks before Google owes the Russian plaintiffs 1 Googol (that’s a 1 followed by 100 zeros).
Google’s Russian subsidiary filed for bankruptcy in the summer of 2022 and was officially declared insolvent last fall.
Google had already stopped online advertising in Russia to comply with Western sanctions over the war against Ukraine. Since then, YouTube has been available in Russia without ads.
Record result
The Alphabet Group this week reported record sales of $88 billion for the last fiscal quarter (July to September).
Net income for the three months was $26 billion. YouTube contributed $8.9 billion – a good twelve percent more than in the same quarter last year.
Sources
(dsc)
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