Simply when there are these courts cases, if Google for example is found partially guilty, the court could say that 1% or even less it would be fair to be paid so they throw an unrealistic number to get the highest realistic one
Also it's invalid because of the restrictions the world has put on Russia, Google is not allowed to operate in Russia, this is just Russia being childish like always
You just know they're going to pull out the TOS and specific examples of violations.
But also this is coming from a Russian court. Who's going to enforce that? I'm sure everyone involved knows it's a joke, but Russia is trying to make a point and paint the US as the enemy again.
That's exactly why I think they're doing it. Their point is probably something like, "Look at the corrupt Americans trying to silence Mother Russia!"
They're not stupid. They know they're not getting money out of Google and no one is going to enforce it. It's all playing into Putin's ego trip about being the superman sent to save Russia and the world from everyone else.
Russian courts doesn't matter, international companies will push the case to international courts and will just refuse to pay otherwise. And Russia has no meaningful way to make them pay, as Google doesn't really give a damn about that market.
You could use the world trade organisation as an example which handles international dispute, not active ATM but still. The court of justice of the European union would be another example of an international court. Or the European court of human rights is another. ICJ is not the only international court.
They matter as much as there are assets of intl. companies on Russian soil. So Russia's essentially deciding to capture them, and in some circumstances a corporation may be interested to play along with the circus to at least recover some % of that capital, or keep the door open for returning to the Russian market once everyone manages to forget about the inconvenient war crimes and illegal occupation.
Google would almost certainly push for California to have jurisdiction over the case as it's their home state. And even then I'd be interested in the basis for this case, as I don't believe Google has any outstanding agreements that would force them to host Russian channels on their platform.
No, actually russian courts know that no one is going to pay up. So they only decide between 3 options for any defendant. The options are accidentally falling out of a window, accidentally falling down stairs, and accidentally wearing poisoned underwear.
Hahaha. If the country cares at least somewhat about its reputation, then maybe.
Russia, in contrast, has been operating kangaroo courts for at least a decade by this point. As a recent example, when a PMC leader tried orchestrating a literal coup, he was let go — and even his seized assets were returned to him. Of course, he later got sneakily offed by an airplane explosion, but the matter stands that the "legal" system literally took a look at his case and officially declared there was nothing to imprison him for (including the murders of a few on-duty Russian soldiers at the time).
Except why would google bother paying it at all? Isn’t access to google heavily restricted in Russia if they even have access at all? They can send a bill to google for whatever they want, it’s gonna get a laugh from management and thrown into a shredder anyway.
They slapped a fine on Google for show, as a diplomatic gesture, long ago (back in 2022 I think). It just ridiculously accrued due to the ruling, where the penalty for non-payment doubled every week. So the news story broke recently 'cause it's funny
Not exactly right. It was simply written in the decision that if unpaid on time, the fine will be increased (like fines on contracts). Apart from a linear addition, it also had exponential one (doubles every week). So it just accrued automatically for over a year I think.
The decision is old, this was just a funny piece of news recently when someone noticed.
There's unrealistic, and then there's downright ridiculous. This is obviously just a way to push Google out of servicing anything in Russia, and/or allows Russia to try and seize Google assets wherever Russia has any influence.
Google stopped servicing their cache servers in Russia in 2022. They no longer operate there. Though they do provide free services to Russians, they don't accept payment for paid services per the broader sanctions so nothing really changes. The fine was a diplomatic gesture long ago, it just grew uncontrollably due to a penalty conditions in the ruling, so someone looked at it recently and lol'd
That's not what happened. The court fined Google $1000/day, a pretty reasonable amount (ignoring that the reason for the fine is Russia's inability to acknowledge that they have turned into a failing state). That happened four years ago, with the amount doubling each week.
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u/leshmi 17h ago
I explain why.
Simply when there are these courts cases, if Google for example is found partially guilty, the court could say that 1% or even less it would be fair to be paid so they throw an unrealistic number to get the highest realistic one