Thursday, October 31, 2024

"Russian court fines Google $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000" (GOOG)

Back to the Register, October 29 this time:

Don't hold your breath Putin

A Russian court has ruled that Google owes Russian media stations around $20 decillion in fines for blocking their content, and the fines could get bigger.

To put that into perspective, the World Bank estimates global GDP as around $100 trillion, which is peanuts compared to the prospective fine. Google would therefore have to find more money than exists on Earth to pay Moscow - but on Tuesday fell a little short of that mark when it posted $88 billion quarterly revenue.

The bizarre amount has been calculated after a four-year court case that started after YouTube banned the ultra-nationalist Russian channel Tsargrad in 2020 in response to the US sanctions imposed against its owner. Following Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine in 2022 more channels were added to the banned list and 17 stations are now suing the Chocolate Factory, including Zvezda (a TV channel owned by Putin's Ministry of Defence), according to local media....

....MUCH MORE

A decillion here and a decillion there and pretty soon you're talking real money.

Earlier from El Reg:

US Army should ditch tanks for AI drones, says [ex-GOOG CEO] Eric Schmidt