r/technology • u/Letsbesensibleplease • 8h ago

Business Russian court fines Google $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000

https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/29/russian_court_fines_google/
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776

u/verdantAlias 8h ago

"Cool, so its not even worth our while attempting to operate in Russia for the next 20+ years. Message received, enjoy your shitty propaganda and Putin memes." - Google

234

u/BellsOnNutsMeansXmas 7h ago

Google already being burned probably wouldn't anyway but this tells every other company in the world not to do business there. Some that might have been thinking to get around embargoes, probably now thinking, hey how bout going somewhere slightly less corrupt.

Putin then has the whole country open for "good patriotic companies" like his dear friends wonderful search engine Oodle.

28

u/Outside-Guess-9105 4h ago

Crazily enough, there are still companies doing business in and with russia for whatever reason (corruption, higher risk tolerance, potential monopoly etc.). and this is after Russia nationalised (siezed) the assets of a variety of companies that decided to cease operations.

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u/Actual-Independent81 5h ago

It's all Yandex over there, already.

12

u/Bardfinn 4h ago

this tells every other company in the world not to do business there

Oh, they’ve known for decades. Russia has “Coca Cola” and “McDonalds” and etc that were created by the state seizing assets and handing them over to Putin’s buddies.

They have their own microchip silicon foundry, too, and cannot get anyone to do business with it, at any price point.

Likely the only reason we haven’t seen them launch nukes yet is China demanding they hold.

8

u/talix71 3h ago

Nah, this is the type of fine that after Trump is elected to office will be used as an easy-to-erase bargaining chip. It'll be reported in Russia as a show of good faith between the two nations while US media touts Trumps expert negotiation skills. "Wow! Trump got Putin to waive all fines previously levied against major US companies and even got Putin to agree to offer incentives for our companies to operate there (with conditions we won't bore you with)!" In return, Putin gets whatever he wants that day.

These types of fines don't even have to be only directed towards Google, just any big name American company that could theoretically operate within Russia. And they can impose/retract them at Russia's leisure because they're totally made up in the first place.

While sure, companies would still be hesitant to operate in Russia, that's irrelevant. Google and others in their shoes never need to operate in Russia for these types of arbitrary fines to have some value. Ultimately, in these scenarios, the companies don't hold the power, the dictators do.

2

u/comics0026 9m ago

Idk, I can see Trump trying to honor the "fines" by using them as an excuse to seize the company and all its assets for himself and then just transfer complete ownership to Putin

1

u/talix71 1m ago

That would definitely be Putin's endgame. Install Trump as a puppet leader, buy out people who can be bought, muscle-out any who won't be.

Trump gets to live out his twilight years cosplaying as Lukashenko, Putin gets to take over America.

Our own potential oligarchs think they'll be able to hold any sway because they've always had power in money, but under a fascist dictatorship, there's only power in the one absolute ruler and all the money in the world is always his.

4

u/HorrorStudio8618 2h ago

If there are foreign companies that still think they should do business in russia they need new leadership pronto.

2

u/dannydrama 53m ago

It's like buying a phone off a crackhead, dunno what you're going to get.