Russian Regulators Block Google Online Advertising Acquisition 120
An anonymous reader writes "Russian regulators will not let Google buy a local online advertising company, halting a $140 million deal agreed to in July. Google had planned to acquire Zao Begun, which has a search and contextual video and text advertising business. Begun is owned by Rambler Media, a Russian company that own various Web sites and runs a search engine. Google said it is reviewing the decision of Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) and hasn't decided how to react. Slashdot has previously covered some of the issues surrounding Google's muscle in the advertising market."
Google made a major mistake (Score:2, Funny)
They forgot to bribe the Russian mafia.
Re:Google made a major mistake (Score:4, Funny)
More like the government instead of the Mafia. China is the same too.
Re:Google made a major mistake (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Google made a major mistake (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's what he said.
Controlled propaganda (Score:2, Interesting)
I imagine that Sergey Brin has already invested quite a bit of money into the Russian economy. Although if you control the advertising you control the propaganda.
Re:Controlled propaganda (Score:5, Insightful)
what kind of propaganda has Google put out? controlling the media is the way to put out propaganda. advertising is mainly used for branding and manipulating consumer purchase decisions. perhaps they're promoting consumerism in Russia, but it's still the media conglomerates who control TV/radio/newspaper/etc. that write the propaganda and influence societal perception & cultural attitudes.
although in a consumerist society advertising dominates our culture, it's still the media that are the gatekeepers of information and our window into the world. the internet has actually democratized the media by allowing the public to bypass traditional channels of media distribution which are largely been consolidated and tightly controlled by a handful of media corporations.
by supporting net neutrality, public internet access, open wireless networks, and generally promoting a free & open internet, Google is actually helping to decentralize media control and content distribution. YouTube lets anyone create video content and distribute it to millions of viewers. Google search also helps people browse the sea of information on the web on their own terms--compared to TV networks that restrict what you watch and decide for you what information you want to access.
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seeing as you don't get that, I'm not surprised you see a difference between advertising and propaganda. same shit, different "smile".
maybe you can understand these words: don't put all your eggs in one basket.
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I looked up this "beautiful agony" thinking maybe it's gore or something, but I'll summarize for the unaware here:
Women masturbating (presumably) and moaning with only their face shown to the camera.
Given that youtube wants to remain a family-friendly site, and your beautiful agony videos can be pretty easily found via Google, I don't see the problem. Youtube is a video site with a few rules, and they are allowed to enforce those at will. They host the content, they write the rulebook. Google is a search en
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Ah, the good old "X is not quite as bad as Y, therefore we can ignore X being bad" defense.
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Noone is ignoring the fact that google is doing evil by our standards, and that censorship is bad. Yes we all get that.
But currently, its chinas country and their rules. Its far better that google is in the country, providing searches and telling the population that these searches are being censored than not, both from a business and ethical point of view.
Google staying out of china couldnt change something, and they arent doing evil by the standards of china, you cant just put the entire world under your i
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IMO, Google's behaviour in China is the least bad of the available options. To select it, therefore, is not "doing evil" even if the same actions in different circumstances would be evil. Cutting people with knives is usually evil - but not if you are doing life-improving surgery. If Google had the option of not censoring, then to censor would be evil. But it does not have that option; I can see no way it could open up that option; and therefore it is not evil.
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advertising is mainly used for branding and manipulating consumer purchase decisions.
advertisements are commercial propaganda
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Where the partiality is typically fairly obvious. Unlike propaganda which masquerades as "news" or "balanced opinion".
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Interestingly enough, there was an article on Slashdot sometime in the past two years (not sure when) that referenced a study that showed that the "democratizing effect" the internet has on media has actually led to *less* information being available. All of the traditional sources of media
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actually, my data comes through lines owned by my ISP/telecom. and, no, Google's privacy policy prohibits their selling personal user info to 3rd parties. they may pass aggregate non-personally-identifiable data (i.e. how many users searched for a particular term) to 3rd parties for processing, but any personal information cannot be shared with 3rd parties without opt-in consent [google.com].
i apologize for ruining your paranoid delusions.
Kudos for the Russian regulators for... (Score:2, Insightful)
Hey, American people: if you want to look for reasons why we are no longer on top, look straight to your government. You have looked to them solutions but they have been delivering the opposite.
Try thinking for yourselves for a change.
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There is a name for this (Score:3, Informative)
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No, FASCISM! (Score:2)
Look in the goddamned dictionary. Look at several dictionaries. Fascism has been called (pardon me for a slight misquote): "An unholy alliance between government, money, and corporations". And that was during THE SECOND WORLD WAR, over half a century ago!!
Putting a different name on it does NOT make it a different thing.
Here is another quote for you, the source of which is equally uncertain because so many have said i
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I agree that this is amusing (Score:2)
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No, it was you. Your basic line of logic was as thus: The American economy is in decline. Russian regulators blocked a Google acquisition. Therefore, the American economy is in decline because they did not block big business acquisitions.
Maybe there is some evidence or argument supporting your assertion, somewhere, but it certainly isn't in your post. Your post is simply post hoc ergo propter hoc. You need to say why what Russia is doing is better than what the U.S. is doing.
Huh? What? Where did this come from? (Score:2)
If you have a refutation of WHAT I WROTE, then state it. But you are arguing against things I did not even say, and assuming that I meant those things. You are very wr
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You didn't write anything. You didn't define what a "better job" was. You just vaguely pointed to Russia and said "see? They're doing better!"
Never mind that the current economic downturn in the states probably has more to do with the subprime crisis than with lackluster anti-trust regulation.
And your arguments in the other threads are so drenched with the stink of classical economics that you can smell it from a mile away. When Smith was writing about the "invisible hand", he wasn't thinking goods as in te
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Blocking big corporate takeovers in unAmerican, right?
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Hey, American people: if you want to look for reasons why we are no longer on top...
Luckily, our strategy is to drag everyone right under us once more...
Really??? (Score:2)
Sorry, dude. Hoist by your own petard. A monopoly (or near-monopoly) is still a monopoly, no matter how it got there. Once it does, it can choose to play by the capitalist rules, or remain a monopoly. Sadly, Google has some chinks in its "do no evil" armor. And they are pretty damned big.
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How is Google not playing by the capitalist rules? Just ten years ago, Google was a grad student research project, and now it is the global leader in Web advertising. It's crucial to realize how Google came about, because the firm that ultimately dethrones Google will emerge unexpectedly from humble roots.
Look, nobody is forcing Internet users to rely on Google for search. The reason for Google's continued dominance isn't because it is an evil monopoly, but because Google managed to build a platform that a
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Exactly.
People really ought to think of monopolies in the old Classical economic school way. As in created by the State's coercive power.
In the free market monopolies can only maintain themselves only for as long as they provide the best service for the lower price. Raise prices after dumping the competition and new competition will take you on that bid. As long as the market remains free of hindrances and regulations, including 'anti-trust agencies'.
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In the free market monopolies can only maintain themselves only for as long as they provide the best service for the lower price. Raise prices after dumping the competition and new competition will take you on that bid. As long as the market remains free of hindrances and regulations, including 'anti-trust agencies'.
After you have driven a few start-ups out of business what sane investor would put money into a start up that is going to be just driven out of business?
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One who ranks his chance to make a profit higher than his chance to be driven out of business. Predatory pricing cannot be sustained for more than the short-run.
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how long has ms been ontop now?
faeries do not run the free market, its not perfect (hence the bailout) accept that the free market has its flaws and move on!
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I use Linux. So can anybody else. Or MacOS, or *BSD. A monopoly is a monopoly, not a 90% market share.
And c'mon, did the free market create the bailout? Did it set the interest rates that made money practically free? I'm no economist and I know that growth based on credit expansion is unsustainable and always ends with a bust. Keynesian central bankers don't seem to get it, but please don't tag 'free market' on them.
Closing on a lighter note, if the fairies ran the free market, it wouldn't be a free mar
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Huh? (Score:2)
Capitalism did not fail you. Nor did the free market. What failed was a market that was no longer "free" in any real sense of the term. Just for example, the government did not enforce antitrust laws that would prevent mergers leading to oligopoly (the control of the market by a few). There are other reasons, but it is sufficient to point out that oligopoly is NOT a free mark
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Where did I say that capitalism failed? Central banking and socialism has failed, yet again. What we NEED now is capitalism.
Fannie and Freddie had even higher leverage ratios that that. Freddie ran at 70:1. That wasn't about grabbing as much money, it was about the Government getting a free political ride saying "we're lending so every working American can own a house". Wow, what noble politicians, big hearts. Bad business, as we've seen recently.
Antitrust laws DON'T keep everybody working within a comp
Apologies (Score:2)
Which has been a rallying cry in the past, as you know, for both Socialists and Fascists. And I have heard people saying this recently so I have been quick to jump on that and correct their mistake, because it is a very LARGE mistake. In fact it was almost invariably the Socialist or Fascist elements of govern
That is a straw-man argument. (Score:2)
You cannot say that "the market" brought MS into line, because they are two different markets today. And
That is where you are wrong. (Score:2)
Marx may have been an idiot, but if so he was a well-paid idiot. Never forget that.
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No, having a high market share does not make you a monopoly unless you have the power of a monopoly. Since dynamic markets (like Web advertising) are highly contestable, the ever-present threat of entry by new firms forces even the most dominant players to behave as if they weren't monopolies.
If Google were really a monopoly, it wouldn't have to work so damn hard. The folks in Mountain View could just cut prices temporarily whenever somebody got too close, and otherwise sit on their chairs and twiddle their
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Monopoly is not something to be categorized alongside free market, they are not opposing concepts. In theory, a monopoly could arise on a free market by absolutely undercutting every competitor on price, quality and everything. Arbitrary controls, laws and regulations not present, there will be more competition the more the established firm drives prices up as consequence of its privileged position.
What we usually have in real life are government interventions to protect consumers - from a theoretical mon
I can appeciate your point (Score:2)
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We can rely on them not to inflate prices (for any significant length of time) if their market has no barriers to entry, because firms will move to join the market if the monopoly becomes decadent and raises price or lowers quality. They will do this for the very reason that you think we can't rely on them -- they are profit maximizing, like every other entity or organism.
If you want to understand economics well enough to become anything more than just an armchair federal regulator that spits and rants and
More assumptions. Man, you are full of them. (Score:2)
Why do you assert that this is a contestable market??? Please, present evidence. Yo
And caught you in a falsity (Score:2)
This presupposes that there are no barriers to entry. But you have not shown that, and in fact the evidence is strongly against you. Firms will join the market if the price point is too high AND there are no barriers to entry. Which is something that you have claimed but there is no evidence to show that this is true. So this is a PRETTY DAMNED BIG ASSUMPTION. Unless you can demonstrate no
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you assume that you can rely on them for anything.
I didn't say that. I said we could rely on them to be profit maximizing. If maintaining a fair pricing scheme is profit maximizing because it keeps them in business despite anti-trust regulators looking for excuses to take them down, then we can rely on them to maintain a fair pricing scheme. If fair pricing is not profit maximizing ... well, then, we can rely on unfair pricing. Our goal should be, therefore, to stimulate fair pricing schemes; that is, aft
You contradict yourself. (Score:2)
Then, you s
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First, you say that you did not assume that you can rely on them for anything, then in the next sentence you say that you can rely on them to be profit-maximizing.
I meant that we couldn't rely on them to be benevolent, but we could rely on them to be profit maximizing. Wouldn't you agree? Isn't that sound logic? You do agree, you're just being a bitch again because you think you've "caught" one of my screw-ups. Why don't we pay attention to the real issue at hand?
Then, you state that the internet ad busi
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Excuse me, but the two situations are mutually exclusive. (You even subsequently say they have an "iron fist" on email client advertising.) Sorry, but the left side of your mouth does not seem to understand what the right side has been saying.
Wow, you are fucking stupid. You present no evidence of anything, then routinely ignore my logical conjectures and examples, and accuse me of presenting no evidence.
Some textbook somewhere told you that those situations are mutually exclusive. Wow, you're so insightf
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And I challenge you to demonstrate that the latter is so, with something better than the claimed "benevolence" of some corporate managers.
I challenge you to actually read what I said, and realize that I didn't suggest they were benevolent. And nevermind that I've already demonstrated that the barriers are low; there is no way for a monopolistic force in the advertising sector to hoard the means of production. Therefore, if they raise prices unreasonably, new firms will join the market.
And this is all besi
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Sheesh. And you accuse ME of being stupid.
Your arguments are not compelling. Evidence is, especially in the face of... yes, history, which has presented whole volumes of contrary evidence to your arguments. History is a powerful teacher. Some people ignore it. And there is a saying about that. But regardless of that, without evidence yo
There you go again! (Score:2)
Jesus! I have run into some dooz
Pardon, one of my posts did not actually post. (Score:2)
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I did not say they weren't. What I did say is that monopoly is not the opposite of a free market. The opposite of a free market is a regulated market.
Saying that 'Monopoly is NOT a free market' is like saying 'Getting all vomited is NOT a night out drinking'. Doesn't make much sense.
What I described was not a 'cartel' taking control of a market. In my example, the 'cartel' or oligopoly was created by the State. Which IS the way classical economists defined a monopoly. A cartel is also unsustainable in a
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By its very nature it is not subject to free market forces, and you may not rely on free market forces to influence it.
I've already refuted this point of yours in about 3 or 4 different posts ... should I really bother reprinting my arguments here? Nah, probably not.
Actually, macroeconomics is a fairly well-defined field of study. You cannot just come in as a newbie and call things whatever you want. You will be laughed at.
Wow, you're a pompous bitch. Don't throw stones in glass houses.
No, you have not "refuted" anything. (Score:2)
You have made statements, some of which refuted things I did not even write, and other statements which did NOT refute things I did state. You have actually "refuted" just about nothing, at least until you present evidence to back up the points that really did argue against my own, which points you have not quite seemed to figure out yet.
(Not to put too fine a point on it: w
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And if you are counting on "the market" to control even a "benign" monopoly, you are going to be very disappointed. Hey, man. Society has been there, done that, many times in history, and it DOES NOT WORK for any length of time.
This seems to be your sole evidence, despite the fact that you're dealing with an entirely new service in an entirely new market that is fundamentally different from all markets that have existed in the previous centuries. What we are doing with the internet is unprecedented, and t
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You're a fool. It remains a free market as long as it can still be contested -- that is, as long as the market still has low barriers to entry for new competitors. If there are low barriers to entry and the product is relatively homogeneous (as in the online advertising business), then an unreasonable hike in prices on the part of the monopoly or oligopoly will cause new firms to form, and these new firms will "invisible hand" the price back to a fair market value.
The monopoly can only raise prices at will
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This isn't necessarily true. The problem you run into is that monopolies have the power to destroy the free market by raising the barrier to entry via several techniques, such as by temporarily lowering prices, suing new competitors for IP violations, buying all competitors, or not allowing competitors to use their infrastructure. Microsoft is guilty of all of these things, either directly or by proxy. Likewise, the telephone companies have done some of these things.
Some of these things are illegal. But rea
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Then why aren't others doing it? Are you going to try to tell me that they haven't thought of it? Or that it's too new? Yeah right.
More pedantry out of you. This is just a nay-saying attitude; "it hasn't been done before so it can't be done! I'm a helpless person who thinks only in terms of what I can't do!"
A monopoly (or near-monopoly) is still a monopoly, no matter how it got there. Once it does, it can choose to play by the capitalist rules, or remain a monopoly.
Or, just maybe, some business executi
In Soviet Russia (Score:5, Funny)
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It's not Zao Begun (Score:5, Informative)
Please, translate correctly. It's "Begun Inc."
ZAO means "Zakrytoye Aktsionernoye Obschestvo" (Privatly Held Corporation) in Russian, it's not a part of the name.
This guy isn't a pedant (Score:1, Redundant)
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ZAO means "Zakrytoye Aktsionernoye Obschestvo" (Privatly Held Corporation) in Russian, it's not a part of the name.
Funny thing is that "zao" is adjective meaning "evil" in Serbian.
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Or possibly "Begun Ltd"
ZAO means "Zakrytoye Aktsionernoye Obschestvo" (Privatly Held Corporation) in Russian, it's not a part of the name.
On the other hand "GmbH", meaning "Gesellschaft mit beschränkter Haftung" is often left unchanged when refering to a German company. The current approach with proper nouns is to avoid making changes unless required by different alphabets. Thus you have "The SNCF TGV" rather than "French Railways/Railroads HST" or e
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Well, "GmbH", "LLC", "Inc.", "Ltd." are very well known. Also, GmbH is written in Latin alphabet.
In Russia a practice of adding company type to its name is also widely used (like "OOO Stepanov" - "Stepanoff, LLC").
But they are usually translated, not transliterated in international documents. In fact, I even remember that the official US visa application guide for Russians even had a table of company type translations.
Now, if after a while FAS reverses its decision (Score:2)
Now, if after a while FAS reverses its decision, we will know that Google bribed the officials. Nearly any problem in Russia (or in the US, for that matter) can be resolved with a large enough bag of money.
ZAO, not Zao (Score:5, Insightful)
The official name of the company is ZAO Begun. However, "ZAO" is simply the Russian abbreviation for "proprietary joint stock company"; in the West, an equivalent formal corporate name would probably be "Begun Pty Ltd."
In any case, the summary uses "Google" instead of "Google, Inc."; and "Rambler Media" instead of "Rambler Media, Ltd." Seems rather odd that of the 3 corporations mentioned, only Begun was listed with its full official (though miscapitalized) name.
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How is that odd?
Here's a hint, the author doesn't know a single word of Russian. The author has no idea what ZAO means and hence doesn't realize including it is strange given the other company name uses.
Sure a competent journalist would look it up, but that an article is written by someone lazy also does not seem "odd".
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They wouldn't actually need to understand Russian (or even Russian abbreviations) just looking at a Russian business directory should be enough to clue someone in that it means something akin to "Inc", "LLC", "Ltd", "PLC", "GmbH", etc. just that the Russian convention is to prefix rather than suffix.
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Again, you are assuming the journalist will actually do some work.
The fact that that they don't is not "odd". I promise they didn't look at a business directory for any of the other company names either.
Google overseas (Score:3, Informative)
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I was curious about that actually.
I'm a Aussie and I got a new phone recently.
It had the Yahoo button preinstalled.
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>Most Japanese cell phones have a Yahoo! button on them (not a google button)
Actually, that's just Softbank cell phones, and although Softbank has been getting the most new users every month for over a year now, it is hardly the largest carrier, and thus there is no way 'most Japanese cell phones...' can be a proper statement.
And only reason Yahoo! can be found on Softbank phones is the CEO of Softbank originally started out running Yahoo's operations in Japan. au uses Google for their searches while Do
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Hardly unique to Japanese. The same thing can happen with Semitic languages such as Arabic. IIRC Saudi road signs are notorious for some of their Arabic to English translations.
Good ole Mother Russia (Score:1)
It is good to see a country standing up for itself and preventing a globalising multinational company (even google.com) from taking a well earned portion of their economy. Given the current state of all major economies, it only makes sense that the Russian GOVT is not prepared to let a major national advertisement franchise be taken up by the leaders in WWW. technologies.
Kapai Russia
Mother Russia will make google sleep with the fishes
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Many people think trade is a great thing, but only when it directly benefits them (this is evident in their shopping in stores and so on). Trade that benefits someone else is generally not given such praise, especially if it might hurt a third party.
Russia will break you (Score:1, Interesting)
Russia is slowly falling back into what they feel comfortable with and what they know. They are cracking down on visa's and have reduced the amount of American's allowed into the country. Sure enough they will be back to their old communist ways. This is what the people know and I think they like it that way. Democracy for people that are not used to thinking for themselves is hard.
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That's why you got Bush...twice.
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Actually "democracy" could well include making it more difficult for foreign people to visit and foreign businesses to operate in their country. Fears of people coming from elsewhere and exploiting the locals are
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1) The same is true about Russians visiting the US; it is an expensive, long and tiresome procedure to obtain a US visa in Russia, with a high denial rate (no guarantee, no refund). Actually, USA and U.K. are the worst when it comes to requesting visas.
At least Russian government does not require fingerprints during the application process, i.e. before the decision about the visa and for all the applicant
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I'm sure they are after targeted advertising (Score:2)
I'm sure they are after targeted advertising... as in Soviet Russia, Google searches you!
(Be kind, this is my first usage of a Slashdot meme =) )
Am I the only one that found this funny? (Score:1)
"Firehose:Google online advertising acquisition blocked by Anonymous Coward"
Wow, either Google has suffered in the economic crash or we have super cowards!
Damn Russian mob - hallelujah to Google! (Score:1)
irony (Score:2)
the entire country is a monopoly. russian government is nothing different than a mafia, complete with goons murdering outspoken reporters and opposition voices, even overseas dissidents. russian democracy is dead. that the russian government should have any apparatus called a "Federal Antimonopoly Service" is a pretty good definition of sarcasm
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