I'm generally pro competition but I feel like there's probably more to this story (just remembering how eBay also left Turkey). Aren't there some issues with how the data is supposed to be stored in Turkey (a place where many people including journalists are jailed and does not rank highly as a Democratic country) that would also make Google more likely to just up and leave or outright negotiate with the government o…
ebay did not left Turkey. They acquired a local ecommerce and they are operating over that one now. It wasn't able to compete then it just bought it.
I'm generally pro competition but I feel like there's probably more to this story (just remembering how eBay also left Turkey). Aren't there some issues with how the data is supposed to be stored in Turkey (a place where many people including journalists are jailed and does not rank highly as a Democratic country) that would also make Google more likely to just up and leave or outright negotiate with the government o…
> just remembering how eBay also left Turkey eBay didn't leave Turkey. They've bought http://www.gittigidiyor.com and continuing to operate. They're still here, just under a different brand. They've bought their fiercest local competitor.
Or perhaps the Russian market was large enough that the return on continued investment in it despite the required changes justified remaining in it and the Turkish market isn't large enough to justify continuing to invest in it.
What investment? Google already develops Android, they already developed the “untying” feature for Russia. What’s left? Turkish Localization? I find it hard to believe that even a 50% mobile search share in Turkey won’t pay those incremental costs. I find it much more believable that this is a simple pressure play.
Ongoing support for the Turkish market. Technical support staff who can speak Turkish, documentation in the Turkish language, and a team of developers to handle Turkish-specific i18n bugs. None of these are 'incremental' costs.
I'm generally pro competition but I feel like there's probably more to this story (just remembering how eBay also left Turkey). Aren't there some issues with how the data is supposed to be stored in Turkey (a place where many people including journalists are jailed and does not rank highly as a Democratic country) that would also make Google more likely to just up and leave or outright negotiate with the government o…
Note that the regulation isn't about backdoors or data storage. Google is fined because of tying Search to Android, which is decided as anti-competitive by Russia and EU.
I think they pulled out to avoid paying the fine, but this might prove to be a monopoly exerting tactic as well. There is just no other explanation of pulling out of a market just because you have to un-tie your products now.
Yea there's alot of emotional bickering that comes up when a company says "we won't do business with X". >In other words, Google has a private sanctions regime against smaller countries. With this stupid statement, my company must have a private sanctions regime agaisnt half the world
Your company probably isn't as important to the world as Google.
To the point, though: go read the Reuters article[0] linked from TFA. They're not pulling out of Turkey; they're refusing to license software to "business partners" making products for Turkey unless those partners lock search to Google.
Is your company really boycotting half the countries of the world because they have rules in place regarding your business practices?
Yea there's alot of emotional bickering that comes up when a company says "we won't do business with X". >In other words, Google has a private sanctions regime against smaller countries. With this stupid statement, my company must have a private sanctions regime agaisnt half the world
And this is exactly why we should not allow companies to become worldwide monopolies.
incarceration because war of drugs is fundamentally different from incarceration because I don't like my dear leader.
"One of Richard Nixon's top advisers and a key figure in the Watergate scandal said the war on drugs was created as a political tool to fight blacks and hippies" [1] It's not that different. 1: https://edition.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-...
It goes even further. By having a large (Democrat-leaning) non-white population jailed up, it reduces potential Democrat voters - in some states for life even after incarceration. The only western democracy who does that.
Yea there's alot of emotional bickering that comes up when a company says "we won't do business with X". >In other words, Google has a private sanctions regime against smaller countries. With this stupid statement, my company must have a private sanctions regime agaisnt half the world
I tend to agree - this is similar to when cable companies and television networks have a contract dispute over licenses. Both parties claim the other is being unreasonable and they are the reason you can't watch "channel 257" anymore. In the case of countries in the middle east, there's an added element of obfuscation as there are essentially paid factions in the media willing to carry water for one side or the other. This was one of the many complications for example in unraveling the Khashoggi assassination. Add Russia/Yandex into the mix and it creates another mess that has to get decoded -- i.e. "Russia is the most vigilant party on anti-trust" -- implying that capitalism is alive and well in Russia, while in the US, anti-trust regulators are asleep while large so-called monopoly powers run amok. Yes, there is probably a story behind the story but who do you really trust to tell it to you these days?
Google is perfectly capable of untying their search from Android via a software update, because that’s the remedy they already developed and use in Russia. Turkey is asking them to turn on the same capability. Google is saying they could but that they won’t, because Turkey isn’t a big enough country to make them. And yes, if Google is breaking US and international anti-trust laws, “forcing” people to do things is gen…
Or perhaps the Russian market was large enough that the return on continued investment in it despite the required changes justified remaining in it and the Turkish market isn't large enough to justify continuing to invest in it.
Turkey is more than half as large as Russia in population and GDP. It‘s not exactly a small market.
Google also operate in USA. USA has more people in prison than Turkey has. Recently journalist Max Blumenthal was jailed on false charges.
> Recently journalist Max Blumenthal was jailed on false charges. And released when the accusers were found the be lying. How does this incident put the US in the same league as Turkey?
The accusers being paid employees of CIA seeking to overturn the results of democratic elections in another sovereign nation puts the episode a bit closer to that league.