The Dumbest Thing in Security This Week: Russia Can’t Math

In a year marked by unprecedented disinformation and cyberattacks, at least we can all come together and laugh at Russia’s math skills.

A Russian court this week fined Google “two undecillion rubles,” according to the Russian news agency Tass. Entire Reddit threads were dedicated to figuring out just how big that number is. U.S. news sources reported it as anywhere from $2 decillion to $20 decillion.

The bottom line, so to speak, is it’s many orders of magnitude greater than the entire global annual GDP. And Russia will likely never see a ruble of that money even if Google could pay.

How Big is a Decillion?

How big is a decillion? Many news outlets struggled to explain.

The CNN Wire, in an article published on ABC-7 Los Angeles, described 20 decillion as “a 2 followed by 36 zeroes,” but that appears to add two zeroes too many.

In another creative attempt, the article described it as “around $20 billion trillion trillion.” Your guess is as good as ours there.

Annual global GDP is around $100 trillion, so to get to $20 decillion, simply make that “1” a “2” – and add another 20 zeroes. We’ll borrow this nice graphic from Reddit to help explain:

Why Did Russia Fine Google $20 Decillion?

According to Tass, the fine was levied by a Russian court because Google blocked Russian state TV channels on YouTube.

Google blocked the channels between 2020 and 2022, following U.S. sanctions and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Google ceased operations in the country entirely in 2022.

If the fine isn’t paid in nine months, “it doubles every day after that, and there is no limit on this number,” a lawyer told Tass. Google can return to the Russian market only if it complies with the court’s decision, Tass said.

Tass quoted Roman Yankovsky of the HSE Institute of Education, who tried to put the size of the fine into perspective: “Of course, the claim’s size will soon exceed the value of Google, since it doubles every week, and within a year the size of the claim may exceed an actual googol, a number represented by the digit 1 followed by one hundred zeroes.”

Actually, the market capitalization of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is only $2.1 trillion, so the size of the fine already vastly exceeds the company’s value.

Yankovsky added that Google “clearly will not pay this claim, and the Russian Federation will not be able to recover this money from the company,” since Google isn’t interested in complying with Russian media watchdog Roskomnadzor, and the company no longer has any assets of value in the country.

And after Russia’s massive disinformation, cyberattacks and espionage waged against the U.S. heading into next week’s election, it’s unlikely a permanent thaw will occur between the two countries anytime soon.

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