A court in Moscow has recorded an astronomical debt of Google to Russian TV channels — 2.8 duodecillion rubles, which is a number with 39 zeros. This is evidenced by the materials of the Moscow Arbitration Court session.
The debt arose from Google's refusal to restore the accounts of Russian media companies on the YouTube platform. In total, about twenty lawsuits have been considered. For each day of non-compliance with the court decision, a fine of 100 thousand rubles is charged, which doubles every week, leading to an exponential increase in the amount of the penalty.
The bankruptcy trustee of Google's Russian subsidiary noted that even if all the resources of the Earth or even the entire Milky Way galaxy were used, they would not be enough to pay off this amount. Representatives of creditors and employees of Google LLC advocated for recognizing the claims as registered in order to ensure payments to employees after settlements with the bankruptcy estate, but the court refused to satisfy them, recognizing the claims as current.
According to representatives of the bankruptcy trustee, the size of the claims does not affect their order of execution. The huge amount of debt arose solely from Google's systematic non-compliance with court decisions.
Attempts to recover the debt are also ongoing in other jurisdictions: the Tagansky Court of Moscow fined the company 3.8 million rubles for refusing to remove prohibited content, and the Chertanovsky District Court in January imposed a fine of 8 billion rubles for non-payment of previous fines.
In October 2024, the court imposed a fine of two undecillion rubles for ignoring the requirements to restore the accounts of seventeen Russian TV channels on YouTube, which increases weekly until the decision is implemented.
Experts note that it is theoretically impossible to pay off a debt of this magnitude. If you imagine this amount in 5000-ruble bills, the total weight of the banknotes would exceed the mass of the Earth by 80 million times, and the length of the chain of banknotes would be greater than the size of the visible Universe.
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