LONDON, Jan 22 (Reuters) - Google on Wednesday
won an injunction from London's High Court to prevent the
enforcement of Russian judgments against the U.S. tech giant
over the closure of various Google and YouTube accounts.
Judge Andrew Henshaw granted Google a permanent
anti-enforcement injunction, on the grounds that Google and
YouTube's terms and conditions required disputes to be brought
to court in England.
Henshaw also said in a written ruling that Google Russia's
liquidator had estimated the total of some of the fines faced by
Google amounted to 20 trillion times the gross domestic product
(GDP) of the whole world.
Tsargrad TV, a Christian Orthodox channel owned by
sanctioned businessman Konstantin Malofeev, sued Google in
Russia in 2022, with Russian state media outlet RT filing a
similar case two years later.
They and another Russian company which operates the Spas TV
channel obtained judgments against Google which contain
so-called "astreinte penalties", which rapidly increase with
every day they are not paid.
Lawyers representing Google said at a hearing in November
that just some of the penalties levied on its Russian subsidiary
amounted to an undecillion of roubles, a number with 36 zeroes.
Henshaw said the three channels from late 2023 had tried to
enforce the Russian judgments against Google in courts in a
number of countries - Algeria, Egypt, Hungary, Kyrgyzstan,
Serbia, South Africa, Spain, Turkey and Vietnam.
Google stopped serving ads to users in Russia in March 2022
and paused monetisation of content which it deemed to exploit,
dismiss or condone Russia's war in Ukraine.
It has since blocked more than 1,000 YouTube channels,
including state-sponsored news, and over 5.5 million videos.