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Google Closing Engineering Office In Russia

Posted by Soulskill on from the if-you-can't-stand-the-bears-get-out-of-the-kitchen dept.

An anonymous reader writes: The Wall Street Journal reports (paywalled) that Google is closing its engineering office in Russia. This follows ever-increasing crackdowns from the Russian government over internet freedoms, and intrusive data-handling requirements on internet companies. "[A] new law that takes effect next year requires information on Russian citizens to be stored in data centers in Russia. The law will also penalize Web firms for infringing on personal data rules in the country. Another law passed earlier this year requires bloggers with 3,000 or more daily readers to register with the government and provide their home address. The ruling prevents these bloggers from using foul language and forbids them from spreading false information."

7 of 157 comments (clear)

  1. 50 engineers by Dan+East · · Score: 5, Interesting

    According to an article at ZDNet, the office Google is closing has 50 engineers, and they've been offered positions in offices outside of Russia. Adobe already closed offices in Russia earlier this year, for likely the same reason.

    http://www.zdnet.com/article/g...

    --
    Better known as 318230.
  2. Growing Isolation by tiberus · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I find this rather disturbing in light of Russia's Growing Isolation. I'm left to wonder if Russia is 'just being Russia' or if these laws are being passed with the intent of gently nudging companies like Google and Adobe out of the country. Russia's recent actions in Ukraine have left me with a very Hitleresk taste.

    1. Re:Growing Isolation by Marginal+Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Luckily, Kaspersky is based in Moscow, so that's one high-tech business that's likely to continue operating in Russia, regardless of Russian isolation.

      I'm sure Putin appreciates having a firm that is dedicated to protecting the world's computers form malware located right handy there in the Russian capital. I recently switched from Kaspersky to another product when a Russian friend of mine pointed out the obvious fact that an anti-malware product that's popular worldwide could be quite a dangerous thing in the hands of a dictator.

    2. Re:Growing Isolation by Zontar_Thing_From_Ve · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Your comments are pretty astute. As someone who has actually spent a lot of time in the past decade in Ukraine, and mostly in the Russian speaking parts where the people may see themselves with a strong Russian identity, I have some insight into this. Basically living in the Soviet Union just ruined these people to an extent that it may take many decades or even centuries to fix. The amount of dishonesty and ethical shortcuts required to get by in such a system is something we in the West are just not used to. And even today in the parts of the old USSR that are not in the EU, which is 12 of the 15 former Soviet republics, corruption is just a normal way of life. All this stuff has led to a situation where the people don't really plan long term. In general they are "carpe diem" types to an extreme, often an illogical extreme. As an example, if you were to offer the average Russian a choice between giving them 1000 US dollars today, no strings attached, or giving them 10000 US dollars in 6 months, no strings attached, they'll take the 1000 now. Their mentality is that they may be dead in 6 months or you may be dead in 6 months and unable to give it to them or something unforeseen may happen in the future, so they are really short term planners in the extreme. Putin seems to plan a bit more long term than on average, but I am pretty sure that his plans are far more short-sighted than such planning would be in the West or even China where their culture encourages a very long term view of things. The obvious problem of this is that when things don't go as you expect, you don't really have a plan for that, so I expect he'll double down on the anti-western sentiment and the non-obvious repression like making bloggers identify themselves and saying they need to keep posts clean as a cover for monitoring for subversive posts against the government.

  3. What about the states? by epyT-R · · Score: 2, Interesting

    There are fundamental abuses of rights here too. Is google going to shut down here as well? Google regularly participates in illegal spying programs.

  4. Just an excuse by sshir · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The real reason is that google has failed to penetrate russian market.

    They are cutting their losses, that's all. And considering that there are no prospects for business, there are no reasons to invest into infrastructure.

  5. Lazy journalism by voislav98 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The article is a bit misleading, Russia office is not the only one being closed. Google is closing offices in Norway, Sweden, Finland and several US locations as well, probably cost cutting measures. Lazy journalism, Russia just passed a new law, ergo this must be the reason for the Google closing the office, since another big company shuttering facilities and laying people off certainly doesn't draw the site traffic these days. Funny that the connection with cracking down on internet freedom did not extend to Nordic countries and the US, because what other reason could Google have. http://www.independent.co.uk/l...