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This article below says that Google has been fined $20 decillion USD in Russia due to a failure to reinstate state-owned YouTube channels: Russian court fines Google $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

Why this is even possible? This value is around 1,000 times (I think) larger than the entire global GDP.

Laurel
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2 Answers2

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Of course. Google could pay it off for a long time.

There are often cases where either a prison sentence vastly exceeds human life expectancy or where a fine exceeds the ability of the convict to pay. There are two possible reasons for this:

  • The court wants to make sure that even if the sentence is reduced later on, the reduction happens from a very high baseline. To give a simple and almost-reasonable example, say a release for good conduct is possible after half the sentence in some jurisdiction. If everybody knows this, then "four years" would be understood as "two years, with good conduct."
  • The legal system adds multiple parts of the sentence, like "twice ten years, served consecutively" becoming "twenty years." Each individual sentence attempts to be fair and then simple, heartless arithmetic takes over. By contrast, see the German system where multiple terms are turned into "more than the largest single sentence, no more than the sum of all sentences, and in any case no more than 15 years."

Or it is all theatrics, and everybody knows it is all theatrics.

o.m.
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As the article itself states:

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

This is the apocryphal wheat on a chessboard story coming to life. In the original story, the inventor of chess supposedly asked for one grain were placed on the first square, two on the second, four on the third, and so on, doubling every square of the board. The chessboard has 64 pieces, and the theoretical fine has doubled over 104 weeks.

Legally, the fine is still only 100,000 rubles. By paying that, Google can declare they've paid it. There is no enforcement mechanism for any fines not spelled out as a specific number, other than a new trial, where the original judgement will be re-examined.

If there is trial about the exact amount due, civil law usually restricts late payment penalties to 0.1% per day. Russian law seems to follow this rule, with possibly an even stricter 20% per annum limit.

Assuming the war ends by October 23, 2077, the fine by then will be $28.6 billion under the 0.1% per day rule, or a disappointing $23.2 million under the 20% p.a. limit. If, on the other hand, the doubling per week rule holds, the fine will be 2.26e+863, or 226 sexoctogintaducentillion. You will need a cookie clicker expert to spell it out properly.

And if this judgement was a deliberate joke on Google's name, we can estimate that the fine will reach 1 googol or 10^100 rubles by November 20, 2029.

Therac
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