Putin has had enough: YouTube should go bankrupt

A Russian court has imposed a huge fine on the American tech giant Google, which now amounts to two 'sextillion' rubles. That's a 2 followed by 36 zeros: or 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 dollars.

To put everything into perspective: Google is currently worth 'only' $2 trillion on the stock market. In fact, the amount demanded by Russia is much more than the entire GDP of the world. This is estimated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) at $110 trillion.

The fine has become so enormous because Google has to pay an extra $100,000 every day and the total amount doubles every week that Google does not pay the fine.

The Russian court imposed this huge fine on Google for restricting Russian state media channels on YouTube.

Why?

In this way, the Kremlin wants to put pressure on Google because it does not agree with the restrictions it faces. Google stopped offering advertisements to users in Russia in March 2022 and stopped distributing all content that it considered an exploitation, rejection or approval of the Russian war in Ukraine. Since then, it has blocked more than 1,000 YouTube channels, including news posts sponsored by the Russian government, and more than 5.5 million videos. And the Kremlin wants to have that undone as quickly as possible.

Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, admitted between the lines on Thursday that the enormous amount was symbolic.

(FVDV for Tagtik/Source: TASS - RBC - NBC - Nieuwsblad/lllustration: Pixabay)

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