Russia Fines Google Approximately $2,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 Over YouTube Bans – RBC

Oh noes, Russia could end up seizing all properties that Google owns in Russia.
How will Google survive this?

If that goes any higher it may actually start to cost Google whole US dollars.

That does bring up an interesting point of discussion...

While it's pretty obvious that Google probably has no intention of paying Russia-imposed fines (why would they?)

What are the mechanisms by which any other country's courts have the ability to impose/enforce fines on an American company simply because their service is "on the internet"? (which is accessible by people across the world)


Not sure who all remembers the story from 2022. But basically Canada (our ally and neighbor to the north) tried to pass a law suggesting that Facebook should have to pay their own local news outlets a royalty for articles they publish that find their way onto the FB platform.

Facebook just responded by saying "fine, we'll just block all news content in Canada"

At the time, people (who I presume are no fans of Russia) were portraying Facebook as "the bad guy" for not gleefully waltzing into a system that would've been an obvious way for every news outlet no matter how big or small to exploit a US company and bilk them out of money, and some were suggesting that Google should be forced to A) provide news Canadian news content to Canadians, and B) pay the vig. (it's not hard to see how that would've been easily exploited by local Canadian news outlets who maybe weren't doing so hot in the financial department)


So, what are the conditions, under which, an American company providing a service that happens to be on the internet has to comply with another jurisdictions' rules and pay monetary amounts, vs. when they can say "take this fine and shove it"?

And would that be reciprocal? Meaning, for example, if an adult content company in Germany has an adult website. Just because Texas passes laws saying "you have to have this ID verification system in place to access that kind of content...Texans with internet service are able to type the URL into chrome and get to your website, therefore you have to implement this or will be sending you a fine". Would Germany be under any obligation to enforce that?...or would the onus (and cost) be on the state of Texas to implement a tech-side solution that blocked access to the German website if they didn't want people to see it?


Is there even any objective standard that could be made for that? Or, given the challenges/uniqueness within the realm of "internet", is just one of those things where the executive branches have to hash it out with each other based on "maintaining relationships"?

RileyG said:

That’s a lot of zeroes!

Click to expand...

Which is how much Russia’s going to get.

RileyG said:

Eh?

Is google or Russia really that rich?

Click to expand...

Russia’s going to get “zero”.

essentialsaltes said:

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

According to RBC’s sources, Google began accumulating daily penalties of 100,000 rubles in 2020 after the pro-government media outlets Tsargrad and RIA FAN won lawsuits against the company for blocking their YouTube channels. Those daily penalties have doubled each week, leading to the current overall fine of around 2 undecillion rubles.

Click to expand...

Given the state of Russia's currency that comes to what......about $.50$ ?