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Google Businesses Censorship Government

Google Closing Engineering Office In Russia 157

Posted by Soulskill 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."
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Google Closing Engineering Office In Russia More

Google Closing Engineering Office In Russia

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  • 50 engineers (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Friday December 12, 2014 @09:57AM (#48580677) Journal

    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... [zdnet.com]

    • Stop using that term (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The term is oppression, not "crackdown". The term "crackdown" implies something illegal or immoral going on in the first place -- and the situation here (freedom of association) is nothing like that. The situation here (as in most other parts of the world) is that government has decided to oppress your natural human right to free association. Unless you are a member of the oppressive force -- which logically you can't be if you are also the subject of that oppression -- you are being oppressed, not "cracked

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Kagato ( 116051 )

      I can't blame them. If you have 50 engineers in Russia with access to the network then you have a set of employees that can be leveraged to give access and data to the FSB. It's just too much risk for the employees, the company and the customers.

  • In America, you bloggers are disputin' registering.
    In Russia, dis Putin is registering you bloggers!

    • "[A] new law that takes effect next year requires information on Russian citizens to be stored in data centers in Russia.

      In Soviet Russia, Office is Engineering you.

  • Growing Isolation (Score:1, Interesting)

    by tiberus ( 258517 )

    I find this rather disturbing in light of Russia's Growing Isolation [thediplomat.com]. 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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      ... why not stalinesque? you know putin's actual role model?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Because Stalin fought the far right, whereas Putin is in bed with the far right:

        http://uk.businessinsider.com/... [businessinsider.com]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tiberus ( 258517 )
        It was meant to be a comparison between Hitler's actions leading up to WWII and not a reference to Putin's role model. Prior to WWII a number of actions were taken to Hitler that were, in some ways, similarly responded to as Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Marginal Coward ( 3557951 )

      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

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        And considering that McAfee and Symantec have been named in regards to the NSA scandal, Kaspersky seems to be an even better option. All USA products and services are tainted.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Blue Stone ( 582566 )

        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 und

        • I figured such points would be made. Anyway, I don't see any advantage in using a security product from a country that is increasingly at odds with my own. Russian folks (that is, the ones who still live there, unlike my friend) may feel the same way about the American companies.

          My Russian friend makes the point that everybody thinks they're the good guy, and that everybody else is the bad guy. So in reality, maybe everybody is the bad guy. Oh, except that my friend has many positive things to say about

          • Again, I find myself agreeing with you largely, and would merely add that the President is mostly a figurehead (albeit one with *some* clout) and there are a body of people behind the scenes, who are not elected that run the show. And that includes corporate and wealthy power outside but with access. The US isn't a dictatorship, but the people who control what happens are just as unconcerned with the little people as any dictator.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by 3h ( 309321 )

          This is cute :) It's like five-year-old thinks that he's "gangsta".
          Such comparison between USA and Russia can only be made if you are really ignorant about what goes on in Russia.

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonanonaon ( 3425201 )

      What Russian actions in Ukraine?

      -The relief convoys sent to aid the molested masses left in the wake of the actual self-described Nazi thugs which seized the elected government and drove it into the ground?

      Or their make-believe invasion/s which Washington insists took place, but of which there is zero evidence? (If Russia decided to invade, Ukraine would be under Russian rule. Seems simple enough. Since that is not the case, there was no invasion.)

      Careful what you read; the air is thick, thick, th

      • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

        by oh_my_080980980 ( 773867 )
        Putin's balls are dangling from your chin....

      • "self-described Nazi thugs which seized the elected government and drove it into the ground"

        Anybody who was watching it unfold knows that is simply not true. The government abandoned their posts, and then your man Yanukovych fled like a pussy. It doesn't matter what Washington said, we were all watching on live video. The fact that the CIA also has plots and goals is largely irrelevant.

        But I actually agree that Crimea belongs to Russia (unless you want to discuss giving it back to Turkey). While Ukraine and

        • Anybody who was watching it unfold knows that is simply not true. The government abandoned their posts, and then your man Yanukovych fled like a pussy. It doesn't matter what Washington said, we were all watching on live video. The fact that the CIA also has plots and goals is largely irrelevant.

          It kind of simply IS true, though.

          Ukraine is a complete disaster. They have worse infrastructure at the moment than freaking Palestine, they're in debt up to their eyeballs and there are house-to-house murders o

      • What Russian actions in Ukraine?

        -The relief convoys sent to aid the molested masses left in the wake of the actual self-described Nazi thugs which seized the elected government and drove it into the ground?

        Or their make-believe invasion/s which Washington insists took place, but of which there is zero evidence? (If Russia decided to invade, Ukraine would be under Russian rule. Seems simple enough. Since that is not the case, there was no invasion.)

        Careful what you read; the air is thick, thick, thi

    • Re:Growing Isolation (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rei ( 128717 ) on Friday December 12, 2014 @10:24AM (#48580893) Homepage

      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.

      • Given his style, he'll probably keep doubling down.

        Let's hope so. That's a sure formula for winning in Vegas.

      • Re:Growing Isolation (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Zontar_Thing_From_Ve ( 949321 ) on Friday December 12, 2014 @11:10AM (#48581317)
        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 think that oil prices above $100 made Putin and many Russians dizzy. I think that Russian government wouldn't do many things it did if not for all the easy money.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kagato ( 116051 )

        We are quite lucky that Russia didn't do what they should have done with the oil money. Create a massive sovereign wealth fund. Norway has the largest that's heading towards a trillion dollars. China is over a Trillion if you combine funds controlled by various entities. Russia on the the other hand has a couple very modest funds (under $100bn).

        Why are we lucky? Because Russia has been looking for a way to economically hurt the United States for a very long time. When the financial market crashed in 2

    • I'm definitely no Russia wonk; but their activity with respect to the internet looks fairly similar to the Chinese playbook: a mixture of making domestic surveillance easier(mass surveillance is much more practical if you can just subpoena the results, rather than tap the endpoints, so having Russians using American services hosted in places where getting the good stuff is either impossible or at least impossible to do silently isn't desirable for the local authorities) and quasi-mercantilist support for (P

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        looks fairly similar to the Chinese [...] subpoena the results, rather than tap the endpoints, so having Russians using American services hosted in places where getting the good stuff is either impossible or at least impossible to do silently isn't desirable

        I'm waiting for the US law that "no American citizen may interact with a site in a data-embargoed country," meaning one which doesn't eagerly comply with all US subpoenas and terrorism-letters. Maybe then Google will announce closing its US engineering offices.

    • Resources have a way of not having boundaries, radio waves, land, water... and internet.

      We have already put man made boundaries on other resources, so why not internet. It is just inevitable. The sad bit is that internet is not like land or water, there is abundance of it, unfortunately we just don't know how to handle abundance.

    • Look at China and parts of Europe. Internet isolationism is predictable along with personal encryption, false identities, and the increased reliance on old, known technologies like landlines, faxes, credit card impression machines, and snail mail.

      The Internet is not performing up to expectations and people are considering options.

  • What about the states? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by epyT-R ( 613989 ) on Friday December 12, 2014 @10:13AM (#48580807)

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

    • I think you are referring to perfectly legal spying programs that people don't like.
    • Right because the U.S. is..."Russia, alongside China, is known for stringent censorship laws designed to control the Internet activity of the general public and corporations. " Try again Potsy.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by epyT-R ( 613989 )

        Essentially, yes. Except that here, the government and corporations do each others' dirty work to get around the law and get what they want at public expense.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday December 12, 2014 @10:14AM (#48580817)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I'd guess this has nothing to do with liberties or morals. Where (apart from the summary and TFA's opinionated texts) did you read that? "Google could not be immediately reached for comment." it says, at least outside of the paywall.

      The Russian law changed. If Google stores personal data of Russians, it must now be done in Russia.
      Therefore, Google has two options. Open a datacenter to store this data in Russia, or close their Russian subsidiary, which would be breaking this new law.
      Google chose the latter,

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by c ( 8461 )

      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

      Well, there's a substantial practical difference between closing a branch office of 50 employees and shutting down your corporate HQ and main data center.

      But, more importantly, the consequences of calling out the US government for bad behaviour is tame compared to how Putin handles corporate dissent.

    • 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.

      For every thing Russia does you can pull up something from the US that sounds similarly bad unless you go into some nuanced detail.

      But there's one big difference. In the US you have the luxury of this stuff being debated in government, in the media, on talk radio, on the Internet, and in person. Active censorship or oppression of these discussions is extremely rare.

      Do you think you could do the same in Russia?

      I'm not saying the US is great, it's done, and continues to do, some really awful things. But the w

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dahamma ( 304068 )

      Oh bullshit.

      The US government obviously secretly spies on citizens just like Russia and most other countries. Yeah, it's annoying but you are naive if you think it's not ubiquitous.

      But the US does not imprison journalists and artists for things like speaking badly of the government or singing an "offensive" song in a church.

      Google was worried their employees in Russia would be held criminally accountable for draconian spying and censorship laws, and so they decided it wasn't worth risking. They aren't wor

  • So Google closes engeneering office on grounds that Russian government makes it more difficult for NSA to snoop on its citizens?
    Or maybe Google closes engeneering office on grounds that Russian government doesn't want its country to be affected when USA prezident doesn't feel like allowing any other country in the world to have its own foreign policy?

    Yeah, seems like a 'reasonable' move.

    • Yeah it has nothing to do with Russia's stringent censorship laws designed to control the Internet activity of the general public and corporations....*eye roll*

  • Bloggers (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    So if the russian government doesn't like a blogger, all it has to do is hit the blog 3000 times within a day to force him to register, give his name and address, and have him under control.
    Captcha: unfair

  • First part seems good (Score:4, Informative)

    by Roodvlees ( 2742853 ) on Friday December 12, 2014 @10:22AM (#48580875)
    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.

    • It seems though that it will in this case only give the government more control over your data.

      I think this is the deeper reasoning behind most such moves all over the world. We've seen a lot of motion in this direction after Snowden's revelations, but I think it's less about worry that the US government may have too much access to countries' citizens' data than it is about the insight that if the data is within their borders then they can get it. Oh, I suspect that lawmakers in many countries who are citing the former rationale really mean what they say... but that they're being advised and encourag

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by mlts ( 1038732 )

        There is also unintended consequences. Say every country demands this where their citizens' stuff is stored on domestic data centers. Now, the government of Elbonia passes a law stating that for anti-"terrorism" purposes, their version of a secret police has to have real time access to all servers, which in addition to a vague law or two about seditious speech, starts getting people tossed into prison.

        It is the lesser of two evils. The US isn't perfect, but I can have a banner in a window cursing the Pre

  • Just an excuse (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sshir ( 623215 ) on Friday December 12, 2014 @10:27AM (#48580917)
    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.
  • We are so f*cked.

  • Lazy journalism (Score:5, Interesting)

    by voislav98 ( 1004117 ) on Friday December 12, 2014 @10:59AM (#48581189)
    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... [independent.co.uk]
  • Google's office must be too close to Snowden's hideout for comfort.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ksevio ( 865461 )
      But Google benefited from Snowden's actions. It was from the documents he released that let them know the NSA was tapping links between data centers.

  • Perhaps (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Russia and Egypt are aware of computer machine intelligence robots run by NGO entities such as, say, a Google engineering staff that can multiply and manipulate comments and stories on social medial to engineer social unrest and revolution by influencing the news cycle and creating a cascading multiplier effect. It's a known known for those who stay aware. Probably run by DARPA and the CIA. Putin learned from Egypt you gotta shut them down if you want to stay in power. The opening moves in a broad geo strat

  • This is because russia is sexist (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    and feminists love making sexist men lose their jobs and be blacklisted.
    There should be a physical response.

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