Russian court fines Google $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

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www.theregister.com/2024/10/29/russian_court_fi…

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1000010459

Comedy gold.

Wonder if this is just the website not being able to cut the number in half, or whether they did this on purpose

I feel like its on purpose but i also feel like web designers are often incompetent with stuff like that. So im undecided.

Maybe the boss said, "Remove wordwrap in headline text for this post."

To be fair the browser default for stuff like this is often kind of bad. Like browsers would rather give you a scroll bar than do a word break (and I can pretty much guarantee that's what's happened here as I can scroll right and see the full number).

The Register kind-of models itself after a tabloid style so has deliberately jokey headlines. It's been around a long time (I read it in the 90s) and seems to have quality underneath the humor.

Possibly the only remaining place where you can read the word "boffins" regularly.

Or do. It's not like people care if he breathes.

On my phone website fits the screen & appears normal, scrolling right reveals rest of the monies

Yepyep, did the same on mine, I just zoomed the page out.

Honestly, really hope they did this on purpose, although I've seen plenty of cases where someone forgot to scale the text to Mobile and it went careening off-screen.

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According to my Google Currency Calculator app, that translates to approximately $14.38 USD.

Best I can do is tree-fiddy

they could just go for googol dollars

They're doubling it every week, so a googol is only ~4 years off.

Maybe they meant rubles. I think I may find that value in my couch.

And the fact that Google didn't pay them more money than exists in the world will be why Russia blocks Google's operations in the country and seizes every bit of property they can get their hands on that they say was even vaguely related to Google's operations. They didn't even bother with a realistic number, because in the end they don't really care who does or doesn't believe them.

They didn't start with that fine, it was just compounding interest

The court imposed a fine of 100 thousand rubles ($1,025) per day, with the total fine doubling every week.

And regardless, Russia can't block Google's operations in Russia because Google isn't operating in Russia since the war. Russia is trying to fire Google when Google quit 2 years ago.

Totally not a joke-country you guys.
Totally normal.

I was going to say Russia must love humiliating themselves but I guess this is painfully obvious the past 2 years

It's an actual court doing this.. Lol.

Is it, though?

Well, a russian one. So not really but ehhhh

So, they do control whatever assets Google had within Russia - article said a closed up office, and 200 remaining employees laid off, to get them entirely out of the country

If they do attempt to look for more assets to seize, they’ll pretty quickly run up against any other country saying “were their sanctions at the time?”

Oh wow, it was that easy all the time to fix a country's economy? Why did no one think of that before?

They know this is impossible - even with their worthless currency. I guess they will soon provide their own services or they will revoke internet access from their citizens.

What you don't need Google to access internet

Yes, but users with basic knowledge don't even get the difference between a web browser and a search engine. Shutting down Google seems like a perfect "simple" explanation for a general digital lockdown.

You're describing users *without* basic knowledge.

It is not only more Rubles than currently exists, but more money than currently exists in any currency 😂

According to the Article:

Google in Russia has been inactive since 2022 after the search giant effectively pulled out of the country following Putin's special military operation.

I guess they will soon provide their own services

Is Yandex not state run? It does everything, the way Musk wants Xitter to, and then some.

Meh. This is but a fraction of what the big media companies think the world owes them for piracy.

Why does the article keep referring to Google as "The Chocolate Factory?"

The Register has been referring to Google as The Chocolate Factory for almost 10 years. As to why, probably because of google’s confectionary named Android releases, which they stopped at Android 10

https://xiaomiui.net/sweet-names-of-android-you-may-want-to-eat-it-18036/

Maybe because their company produces pure shit?

All made up, just like the reason for invading Ukraine

What’s that number in words? Sure. I could use Google, but they just got fined by Russia for $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 so can they *really* be trusted?

2 x 10^34 for those people who like to use numbers to represent numbers in a sane way.

What’s that number in words?

Per the article, it's 20 decillion.

Being fined by Russia is actually a positive stamp of approval in my book!

Google would therefore have to find more money than exists on Earth to pay Moscow

Well to be fair, I do think it's plausible that one day Google will indeed control all the money in the world.

To everyone saying "this isn't possible for Google to pay" really need to take a step back and realize that there's always a way.

Given the amount of money we're talking, it would only take a tiny fraction of that money for Google to deliver a series of small asteroids directly to Russia. Depending on the asteroid, and the conversion rates, Russia might consider the debt paid after a single delivery.

just tell them it's in the mail, google.

Im picturing them sending "cash" with the amount written in comic sans.

And they only stopped writing zeros only because there was no more space on their paper form.

RT broke a bunch of YouTube rules and should have been banned too.

Imagine how much google has robbed from USA.

For monopolistic behavior, right?

Comments from other communities

It's in rubles so $52.11

Now it’s $43.17 - inflation is no laughing matter

Just need to wait long enough to make it three fiddy

I know it's a joke, but you've missed the dollar symbol. That's the fine in USD.

It's a joke.

Literally the first part of the sentence lol

But you still had to "explain it". It's a joke. The whole thing, including the ridiculous number (with a dollar sign) is a joke not to be taken seriously.

Yeah, it wasn't my brightest moment ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

No worry! I hope I didn't came off too much as an asshole 😔

Here ya go, googles. I got your back.

A billion of those and you're still not even close to paying off that fine

The Weimar Republic has entered the chat.

Who knows how long that man had to work to earn that much paper? Twelve minutes? *Thirteeeeen* minutes?

Anyway, until inflation hits *at least* 4,130,772,540,007,917,373,294% Americans should really stop griping about it.

Because of the period of hyperinflation, one day I had a boss unwittingly hand me $500. She bent down and said, "Ooh! Someone dropped a quarter! Wait this ain't a quarter, what the heck is this?" She then handed me a 1934 500 Deutchmark coin. I told her what it was, and asked her if she wanted it. She said she wouldn't know what to do with it, so after I sold it, I gave her $75 as a 15% finders fee.

That's actually really cool.

The only foreign coin I have came from a roll of quarters I got in 2015. Back when I visited the laundromat weekly. I stuck my quarters in the machine, but this one kept getting spit out so I checked it. I didn't recognize the characters on it, but I had an Iranian coworker who might so I took it to work and asked if she knew what it was. She immediately goes, "Oh! This is a dirham! It's from the UAE."

Turns out it was worth 23¢ at the time lol

One thing I forgot to mention, the thing that gave it away was it was cast out of aluminum, so it was really light. Probably worth a lot more these days, since this was about 16 years ago

Honestly looks like Rock Band Bucks.

Oof...can we get separate checks?

Google should send them a $50 Play store card instead

It should have been $Googol instead.

They double the fine each week so it will reach a googol eventually.

That means we reach a googol in ~218 weeks ≈ 4.2 years.

I thought it would take longer.

Can we calculate when it will be

This is why people don't take Russia seriously.

Relevant XKCD, as per usual: https://what-if.xkcd.com/96/

The Earth's crust contains a bunch of atoms,[citation needed]

Lmao

Well, have you *seen* said atoms?

Ha ha ha! What a funny Onion headline!

*checks the community name*

*laughs 1000x harder*

Missed opportunity to fine Google $1 googol.

Isn't that... More money than the GDP of the world?

I think that $20 decillion not only blows the GDP of the planet out of the water, it is also several orders of magnitude larger than the entire valuation of the entirety of the planet including the core.

Edit: looked it up, and the GDP of 2023 was just over $100 trillion.

So google got fined 2x10 ^ 34?

The earth is made up of 1.33x10 ^ 50 atoms. An A4 sheet of paper is made up of 8.37x10 ^ 23. Let's assume roughly a dollar bill is 1/8th of an A4 sheet, so 1x10 ^ 23.

The atoms in the dollar bill (10 ^ 23) multipled by the fine total (2x10 ^ 34) is 2x10 ^ 57.

This means if every atom on the entire earth was rearranged into dollar bills you wouldn't have enough money. You would need to do that to a million earths to pay that fine.

Disclaimer: I half assed this math on my lunch break and I trusted Google AI results for the atom counts

2 × 10^37 according to the headline, but yeah. no, I miscounted.

I value trees more than you

is there a "non-credible economics" community?

!conservative@lemmy.world

Case in point: the most recent post there as of right now is a video by an Ancap accusing someone else of economic illiteracy 😂

Would paying a fine to Russia be a sanctions violation?

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.

How the fuck do you just casually say someone is suing a chocolate factory in stride without providing any further explanation. Wtf

Which will live longer? Google or Russia?

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How about we just quantify, prorate and scale the damage they've done in Ukraine and give them an adequate amount of rubbles instead of rubles?

Even if Google wanted to pay the fine. It'd be all their money, their bills would lapse and YouTube would go down effectively removing their channels anyway...

Honestly based, EU should do the same

I think the headline writer got confused about all the zeroes

Is that 20 Google dollars, by chance?

If Google pays it they could crash the global economy.