A Russian court has fined Google $20 decillion. Because there was a law that said that fines accumulate daily but double weekly. Whoever made that law never heard of the chessboard with the grains of rice. According to the story, some ruler of India many years ago was so delighted with the newly created game of chess that he wanted to reward its creator. The creator asked for 1 grain of rice on the first square of the chessboard on the first day, 2 on the 2nd square of the chessboard on the 2nd day, 4 on the 3rd square of the chessboard on the 3rd day, 8 on the 4th square of the chessboard on the 4th day, and so on -- each day the number of grains of rice doubles. At first the numbers look small but the doubling causes them to eventually become huge -- surpassing the entire world's grain production, and even, by the end of the chessboard, so they say, adding up to a number of grains so huge the pile would be higher than Mount Everest. It's an apocryphal story designed to illustrate the power of exponential growth. In mathematical terms, the number of grains on square x of the chessboard is 2^(x-1) and the total number for the whole chessboard is 2^64 - 1, about 18 followed by 18 0s. If you go thousand, million, billion, trillion, quadrillion (?), what comes after "quadrillion", "quintillion"? Then it's about 18 quintillion.
Likewise, here, according to the article, the World Bank estimates global GDP as around $100 trillion, which is 1 followed by 14 0s, but the fine here, $20 decillion, is 2 followed by 34 0s. (1 followed by 38 0s in rubles.)
To add to the absurdity, what is Google being fined for? Banning the YouTube channels of 17 Russian TV stations. That's it.
Russian court fines Google $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
