Russia has had its various controversies over the last some odd 80 years but the most recent is a pretty big one as they’re taking on one of the largest companies in the world. Russia is bringing a lawsuit to Google for two undecillion roubles! (or 2.5 decillion USD) why is Russia doing this and do they really have a chance of winning against Google?
To answer those questions we first need to find the reason for this situation and why Russia is trying to sue Google for more money than we currently have on the planet. I would also like to bring that number up one more time, 2.5 decillion USD. For reference here’s what that number would look like typed out: $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. The current world GDP is only estimated to be 110 trillion dollars.
The reason why Russia is claiming Google owes the Kremlin so much money all started out with the restrictions of a few Russian Youtube channels, but after the beginning of the war between Russia and Ukraine things only got worse, including restrictions of Russian media in other parts of Europe. Being that there’s no freedom of press in Russia (or any other real freedoms at all), it shouldn’t come as a shock that something like this would happen.
What does this mean for Google as a company? Well, it seems that Google simply won’t pay the fine considering that their estimated net worth is only $2 trillion dollars. Russia has said that they won’t back down and if Google doesn’t pay up in at least nine months the fine will double continuously. However Google does not seem to be too worried by this scenario, “We do not believe these ongoing legal matters will have a material adverse effect on earnings.” Google said.
While everything else with this situation is out of the way, there are still questions about what is going on in Russia regarding the lawsuit since people can’t really get much info out of Russia. We do know what company they’ve switched to. The company Russia has sided with is called Yandex Search. It is based in Russia and it seems a bit sketchy compared to other search engines with weird sounding translations and strange web recommendations, but that’s to be expected out of Russia.
Overall there’s no telling when this situation could end but the one thing that’s for sure, is that both individual bodies aren’t backing down any time soon which certainly counts for a more entertaining outcome, but it may prove catastrophic for Google, or it may not. We can‘t be sure yet, but we may soon.
