How much is too much? How expensive is too expensive?
A Russian court has ruled that Google, the tech titan knows for its formidable internet search engine, owes Russian media stations around $20 decillion in fines for blocking their content, and the fines are not final as they can get even bigger than that.
In this context, a 20 decillion is a 35-digit number.
While the term "decillion" is sometimes used in fields like cosmology and theoretical physics, it is seldom encountered outside of these theoretical contexts.
Although it can occasionally appear in finance, never for such a number to be cited as a fine.
The bizarre amount has been calculated after a four-year court case that started after YouTube banned the ultra-nationalist Russian channel Tsargrad in 2020 in response to the US sanctions imposed against its owner.
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.
"Google was called by a Russian court to administrative liability under Art. 13.41 of the Administrative Offenses Code for removing channels on the YouTube platform. The court ordered the company to restore these channels," lawyer Ivan Morozov told state media outlet TASS.
The court imposed a fine of 100 thousand rubles ($1,025) per day, with the total fine doubling every week. Owing to compound interest (Einstein's eighth wonder of the world), Google is now on the hook for an insane amount of money, or what the judge on Monday called "a case in which there are many, many zeros.”
And the end result is $20,565,635,200,000,003,000,000,000,000,000,000, or around 2 undecillion Russian rubles.
To put a decillion into perspective, Alphabet, which is the parent company of Google, is valued at around $2 trillion, and the World Bank estimated global GDP as around $100 trillion.
It's estimated that the total amount of money in the world, which is commonly measured using the M2 money supply, which includes cash, checking deposits, and easily convertible near money, is approximately $100 trillion to $150 trillion.
Then, the estimated value of all land on Earth, including residential, commercial, and agricultural properties, has been suggested to be around $250 trillion.
And if all forms of commodities, including physical cash, bank deposits, and other liquid assets, the total can reach around $300 trillion or more.
All of which however, are puny if compared to a decillion.
In other words, Google should find more money than what exists on Earth, if ever it has to pay Moscow.
Google is powerful and extremely successful.
After announcing a healthy $88 billion in quarterly revenue, there is no doubt that Google is sitting on huge resources, a big pile of cash, and a lot of talented people.
But coming close to even a fraction of a decillion is an impossible feat.
It's worth noting that Google in Russia has been inactive since 2022 after the search giant effectively pulled out of the country following Putin's special military operation.
At the time, Google said that the Russian authorities had seized its bank accounts, and therefore it had to announce bankruptcy in Russia.
"We have ongoing legal matters relating to Russia. For example, civil judgments that include compounding penalties have been imposed upon us in connection with disputes regarding the termination of accounts, including those of sanctioned parties," Alphabet reported in its last earnings statement (PDF).
"We do not believe these ongoing legal matters will have a material adverse effect."