Gaming IndustryRussia has fined Google $2,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, or more money than actually exists on Earth, all because it’s upset about some YouTube channelsWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

Gaming IndustryRussia has fined Google $2,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, or more money than actually exists on Earth, all because it’s upset about some YouTube channelsWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

(Image credit: Alexey Nikolsky via Getty)

Vladimir Putin being shown something on a computer monitor

What’s the most shocking bill you’ve ever got in the post? Personally, I’m still financially recovering from winter 2022, when a dalliance with an electric heater landed a fat £300 invoice on my doorstep. I write about videogames and subsist on coal soup, and there was Octopus Energy sending me a bill it presumably intended for Jeff Bezos.

For reference, the World Bank estimates the sum total of world GDP last year at $105,000,000,000,000—or one hundred and five trillion dollars. In 2017 (a while back, but not so far back that the numbers will be radically different today),MarketWatchgenerously valued the sum total of anything you could conceivably call ‘money on Earth’—includingcryptocurrencies, above-ground gold supply, and funds invested in financial products—at several quadrillions.

If you take out all the stuff that isn’t actuallymoney(so all the crypto, gold, and financial nonsense) that becomes a paltry $90.4 trillion. Regardless of which estimate you go with, $2.5 decillion is many orders of magnitude bigger. Almost incomprehensibly big. In other words, Russia wants more money from Google than actually exists on Earth.

Meanwhile, Google made $307 billion in revenue last year. If it tried to pay the fine usingallthat money—something it very much could not do even if it wanted to—it’d be a bit like trying to pay off your mortgage with a dime and two cents.

Likegrains of wheat on a chessboard, the fines soon hit such phenomenal levels of exponential growth that it became impossible for any entity on Earth—or even every entity on Earth all together—to pay the total off. Fortunately for Google, I think it never had any intention of doing so anyway. The company ceased advertising in Russia after it invaded Ukraine in 2022, while its Russian subsidiary was declaredofficially bankruptlast year. If Google ever wants to do business in Russia again, I suspect the corporation and the Russian government will have to find some kind of accord to sweep the fine under the rug. Either that, or Sundar Pichai needs to start checking under the couch cushions.

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