Google Subsidiary in Russia To File for Bankruptcy (wsj.com) 53
The Russian subsidiary of Alphabet's Google plans to file for bankruptcy, saying it had become impossible for the company to pay employees and suppliers. From a report: Google submitted a notice of intent to declare itself bankrupt, according to a message published Wednesday on Russia's Fedresurs registry. A Google spokesperson separately said an earlier move by authorities to seize its bank account made continuing operations in the country impossible. "The Russian authorities' seizure of Google Russia's bank account has made it untenable for our Russia office to function, including employing and paying Russia-based employees, paying suppliers and vendors, and meeting other financial obligations," the Google spokesperson said. The company had already paused most of its commercial operations in Russia, including all advertising, after the country's communications censor accused the company's YouTube video service of spreading misinformation and stoking protests.
Re:Tetris [as a Google widget?] (Score:2)
Well, I think your motives were pure, but doesn't the genre of that kind of old joke call for some reference to "Soviet Russia"? But thank you for saving us from AC anyway?
My fuzzy recollection is that the google once used some kind of Tetris game as the home page widget.
But the joke I'm looking for is something along the lines of "Nice job, Vlad. Now you've gone and pissed off the most famous Russian." (Well, actually I think Sergei was kind of annoyed with Russia before this latest fiasco. Currently readi
Probably wasn't needed to begin with (Score:5, Interesting)
AFAIK the only reason Google had that subsidiary is because Russia mandated it so that they could have somebody local to threaten if YouTube wasn't censored. It seems their bluff has been called though because Russia doesn't seem either able or willing to block YouTube, which is basically the worst they can do.
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I borrowed $300,000 to get an unmarketable degree at an overpriced school. Fuck you, pay me!
So I now suppose you want all of your school debts released and to have someone wipe your butt like when you were a baby?
Yep...Murica is doomed by these uneducated, inept snowflakes that were raised by day drinkers and helicopter parents.
I think the problem is that it costs $300,000 in the first place.
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Just imagine that blissful ignorance both to basic forum functions and to Poe's Law.
Just imagine.
Re: Probably wasn't needed to begin with (Score:2)
Actually you're arguing my point for me; in truth I don't have any student debt. I went to cheaper schools, which I paid for partially out of pocket, as well as with grants. Never had to borrow a cent.
Feel bad for the employees (Score:5, Insightful)
As usual the average citizen gets caught in the middle and is the one who ends up paying the price for assholes in top positions, but weighed against what the Ukrainian people are going through, I don't feel that bad for the Russian employees.
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I've always wanted to know what Anonymous Coward is really thinking, because he just seems to be all over the board in with viewpoints, almost like Dissociative Personality Disorder...
Re: Feel bad for the employees (Score:2)
Re: Feel bad for the employees (Score:5, Insightful)
Kind of impossible to know though. How do non-Russian news agencies perform public polling? How are citizens supposed to answer when they know dissent can get you jailed? How many people there are able to see any opinions other than the state-sanctioned information?
Not saying there is not a large amount of people who probably do support Putin for exactly doing and acting how he acts but is it a majority? A plurality? A very loud minority? How could we know? When was the last time they were given a legitimate choice in the matter?
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Support? I suspect Putin has a good deal of support. That is one of things you get when you control the media and why going after the media is the first thing dictators do.
I have a Russian boss who lives in the USA, her sister lives in Ukraine married to a Ukrainian (and they fled their home due to proximity to the Russian border). My boss's father is back home in Russia and legit believes Putin is "saving" his daughter and sun-in-law from Nazis and this despite both daughters telling him he's being lied to
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Also, being supportive of an evil guy when you don't even have the necessary facts or information to create an informed opinion is not necessarily because you're a bad person. It could just mean you're ignorant. Just like someone may be raised from birth being taught that witches are real is not necessarily going to be opposed to hanging someone as a witch; maybe the more enlightened person might ask for a trial first before hanging the witch but they're still fundamentally believing something that's nons
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Not supporting him can lead to many sad accidents. Like falling off a building or shooting yourself inside a suitcase. He outright murdered people in England with nerve agents and nothing happened.
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And because nothing happened it only emboldened Putin.
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An excellent insight into Russian citizens' minds, May 2022.
Local journalists (pro-Ukrainian) interviewed people both in and out of Moscow.
A great read for anyone wanting to know what is happening in Russia right now.
"Feeling around for something human - why do Russians support the war against Ukraine?"
https://meduza.io/en/feature/2... [meduza.io]
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I think it's refreshing to see a large IT firm withdrawing its services from an inherently hostile operating environment.
Could Texas be next, or perhaps Florida, or . . .?
This allows Russia to reallocate any tech owned (Score:3)
Re: This allows Russia to reallocate any tech owne (Score:1)
Re:This allows Russia to reallocate any tech owned (Score:4, Insightful)
What assets do you expect Google Russia to have, legally or actually? It's a facade that exists for compliance purposes, to have a legal presence which can interact with Russian clients. It has outlived its purpose anyway.
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What assets do you expect Google Russia to have, legally or actually?
Copyright & credentials/passwords, literally the right to copy the source code from the cloud or from anywhere else that that Russian subsidiary needed to perform its business operations. Nationalization of the right to copy copyrighted source code is analogous to nationalization of Nazi-German patents by the USA's Alien Property Custodian for reallocation domestically during WWII and immediately post-WWII, such as lanthanum glass lenses to Kodak for better bomb sights on bomber airplanes, ferromagneti
Re: This allows Russia to reallocate any tech owne (Score:2)
Software doesn't work that way.
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What assets do you expect Google Russia to have, legally or actually?
Copyright & credentials/passwords, literally the right to copy the source code from the cloud or from anywhere else that that Russian subsidiary needed to perform its business operations.
You don't think Google would disable all Google Russia employee credentials?
Re: This allows Russia to reallocate any tech owne (Score:2)
Surely it depends on whether they had developers working for that particular legal entity or if it was just a admin or sales and marketing office.
This is disgusting (Score:2, Offtopic)
one of the richest companies in the world saves itself a few bucks by pushing losses onto smaller ones and individuals. Google could afford to pay its bills and leave cleanly without noticing anything on its financial bottom line. This tells you something about the sort of company that it has become.
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There is a difference between Russia and the individuals & small businesses who are also victims of Putin.
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Yeah - you'd think those guys at Alphabet, Inc. were just in it for the money, huh? I wonder what they really want? Oh, yeah - profit!
When you put it that way, Google, Inc. are really the good guys here, aren't they?
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Re: This is disgusting (Score:3, Insightful)
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You make some assumptions. Nothing stops Google/the parent company/ to send their (former) employees a mail cheque and proceed to compensate in another currency, like US$. And nothing says they didn't or won't. Any respectable business would seek an alternative within the reasonable.
Conclusion: your rant is all speculation and about seeking an excuse to badmouth a company for no other reason than to do so. Because to me, having no access to a working bank account, seems to be a legit reason to cease activit
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What do you expect employees in russia to do with a cheque from a foreign bank?
The local banks wont be able to do anything with it, and the employees will find it very difficult to travel to any country that would accept it.
A cheque is just a slow and outdated method of instructing banks to transfer money between accounts. If you can't do modern direct transfers, you wont be able to deposit cheques either.
Plus an american company attempting to send money to russia would probably be in direct violation of sa
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It's not a matter of mismanagement or economic difficulties. Google Russia was fined $100 for not allowing Russian propaganda on Youtube. Do you really think Google should pay the Roskomnadzor fascists and comply with their demands? Non-compliance would certainly endanger lives and keep the fines coming. At what point would you say no and close up shop?
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*) $100 million
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They have no way to move money to their Russian subsidiary due to economical sanctions, and with the Russian government seizing their local bank account, they have literally no money to move.
Re:this is the direct result of a New Sanction (Score:5, Informative)
Which is why Russian tanks are now using computer chips from household applianes [techspot.com] to keep running. Which is why an LNG operation has effectively shut down [nytimes.com] because it can't get parts or equipment due to sanctions. Which is why factories are shutting down and shelves are going bare [cbsnews.com] in Russian stores.
But yes, Vasily, keep telling us how sanctions aren't having an effect. They're just getting started.
Re: this is the direct result of a New Sanction (Score:2, Interesting)
Just accelerating Russiaâ(TM)s move towards self sufficiency. It all depends on whether they can cope with the short term pain (short term being day ten years).
Trump sanctions and the sight of whatâ(TM)s happening in Russia is driving China in this direction. In the case of China theyâ(TM)re going to have a bigger economy to the US and will offer a competing global sphere of influence that will allow other countries to escape the US.
Sanctions generally donâ(TM)t work. More than 50 year
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There is no more "self sufficiency" in the global economy, not anymore. Not for the US, not for China and certainly not for Russia. Globalism won and it won decades ago.
Sanctions as a tool of regime change? Agree, pretty ineffective. As a tool to basically keep an economy from growing to any degree, well that's what Russia is in for. Sure Iran, Cuba and N Korea are under the same regimes but look at their GDP year over year.
For Russia gas and oil exports are already down and will stay down and they simp
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Do you seriously think has the resources to build, say, chip fab plants. It's a petrostate kleptocracy that's been in a demographic decline for decades. The only thing I can see is Beijing rubbing its hands together, ready to make Russia an effective client state in return for an effective annexation of Siberian resources.
This war has demonstrated in spades all the vulnerabilities long suspected, that its army wasn't up to the challenge of a prolonged military campaign. Even if it ekes out some sort of vict
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Do you seriously think has the resources to build, say, chip fab plants.
We should offer green cards plus relocation assistance including short-term housing and living assistance to any and all Russian mathematicians, engineers and scientists who would like to relocate to the US, just to make sure. Also, to snag a bunch of smart people for our own workforce.
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Evidently, not any more. If they had plenty of cash, they'd pay their fucking cable bill.
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Santions don't always show a direct effect immediately.
They need some time before the warehouses are cleared, then the factory / shops storage will clear.
After that, you will start to see the effects. May take a week, a month, 6 months, or longer, depending on the items and how much of a local stockpile they had at the start vs the demand.
"Suspended advertising"? (Score:2)
Google has suspended advertising in Russia. Russia has blocked access to Facebook and Instagram. As far as sanctions go, these don't sound very dire. And presumably the Russians will get more work done now that so much crap has been removed from their internet.