The preposterous penalty arises from a years-long court case brought by Russian TV channels which have been banned from YouTube since 2020, partly as a result of US sanctions.

A court in Moscow ordered Google — which effectively pulled out of Russia following the invasion of Ukraine — to pay a fine of 100 thousand rubles per day, with the total doubling every week.

That sum has now snowballed far beyond the cumulative value of the entire global economy over the course of a millennium, The Register reports.

The judge in the case is reported as having euphemistically described it as “a case in which there are many, many zeros”.

Google, for its part, has told investors that it does “not believe these ongoing legal matters will have a material adverse effect”.