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Google Closing Engineering Office In Russia
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."
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.
... why not stalinesque? you know putin's actual role model?
Google is leaving russia due to data security and intrusive legislation that harms the internet, but sees no problem maintaining an office in the United States, where the government has created secret courts to warrantlessly wiretap what ostensibly amounts to the entire country. Google is just fine with a corporate office in a country that uses state sponsored terrorism and maintains a torture prison. Its Fine with opening offices in a country that jailed Chelsea Manning for whistleblowing or rather spreading "false information" and subsequently ensured 2 years of her forcible detention under suicide watch stripped nude and prevented from sleeping. Google has no problem with a country that runs secret torture prisons and "targeted killings." but whenever Russia passes legislation to force Internet sites that store the personal data of Russian citizens to do so inside the country, it closes shop because it doesnt want to maintain a russian datacenter? or rather is it because in America its not a requirement thanks to a rendition network that just takes people and servers regardless of the country.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Russian wars in 1905 and 1914 lead directly to revolutions, not profits.
Storing data locally will in theory give people more control over their data. It seems though that it will in this case only give the government more control over your data.
The second part is much worse and a continuation of russian policy to keep journalists and other people who have unpleasant things to say silent.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
I think people are all too quick to credit every action Putin takes as being part of some grant overarching plan. Does one think his grand overarching plan included the Ruble falling 40% and the economy solidly on path to contraction after a bunch of failed poorly thought-out attempts to bolster them while turning Ukraine from a militarily-incompetent country with a largely very pro-Russian population into a Russia-hating country full of veterans and causing its neighbors to start clamouring for (and in some cases, getting) NATO bases that NATO had previously been reluctant to do?
Putin's not some brilliant chessmaster pulling all the strings, but nor is he some sort of bumbling fool. He's just a person. He's made some moves in the past that have turned out to be excellent strategically. He's also made a number of blunders. But he's now committed to this path, so he has to walk it wherever it takes him. Given his style, he'll probably keep doubling down.
"We consider that six courts and an asylum claim are a rather odd way of returning to Sweden within a month."
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.
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...
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.
I feel what you say is entirely true, and yet am compelled to add ...
NSA (mass surveillance proven), CIA (torture, kidnapping, coups against democratic countries, assasinations, propaganda, funding of insurgents/terrorists/narco terrorists proven), America being instrumental in creating Al Qaeda, ISIS, etc (blowback) and ... Microsoft, Google, Apple, all the American tech companies who have a cosy relationship with their government.
At a certain point the difference between Russia under Putin and America under any number of presidents is largely that the USA has a more polished public relations strategy.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce