Russia fines Google $2.5 billion over YouTube bans – RBC

According to news website RBC, Google has imposed fines worth about 2 billion rubles ($2.5 billion) in Russia after years of refusing to restore the accounts of pro-Kremlin and state media outlets reported Tuesday, citing an anonymous source familiar with court rulings against the tech company.

According to RBC's sources, Google began accumulating daily fines of 100,000 rubles in 2020 after the pro-government media Tsargrad and RIA FAN won lawsuits against the company for blocking their YouTube channels. These daily penalties have doubled every week, resulting in the current total penalty of approximately two billion rubles.

Undecillion is a number equal to 1 followed by 36 zeros. Google, whose parent company Alphabet reported sales of more than $307 billion in 2023, will probably never pay the incredibly high fine.

According to a source from RBC, a total of 17 Russian TV channels have filed a lawsuit against Google. Among them are the state broadcaster Channel One, the military-affiliated broadcaster Zvezda and a company that represents RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan.

YouTube, owned by Google, has blocked several Russian state media channels for supporting the large-scale invasion of Ukraine. Moscow authorities retaliated with fines but did not stop the site.

Google's Russian subsidiary filed for bankruptcy in the summer of 2022 and was officially declared bankrupt last fall. Alphabet Inc.'s Google previously stopped advertising in Russia to comply with Western sanctions over the war in Ukraine.