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Google to close engineering office in Russia

reuters.com

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Re: Google to close engineering office in Russia

#31

Post by icebraining »

tinco wrote: post #27

Will they close their offices in Europe as well when Europe implements the same laws? They're put in a bad light now because Russia does it, but the EU is contemplating the exact same laws. These laws are not because Russia wants the data for themselves, they are because the US currently has them and they've been shown to be absolutely incapable of dealing with that responsibility in an acceptable fashion.

One difference is that Google already has multiple datacenters in Europe, while they have none in Russia. It wouldn't surprise me if the data of EU citizens was already for the most part in European territory.

Re: Google to close engineering office in Russia

#32

Post by vertex-four »

briandear wrote: post #18
bgarbiak wrote: post #6

Knowing the government's of Russia ways of controlling the media and opposition, I understand and agree with those scared for personal freedoms. On the other hand, I would feel way better if similar law would be imposed in EU, so my data would stay within its borders and be protected by EU laws.

TLDR: it's unrealistic to require a company to follow every country's laws just because some of that country's citizens use a service based outside of that country. The concept of data being "stored" like it's a card in a library card catalog is an anachronism. The physical location is irrelevant. It's the policies and laws under which the companies must deal that's more important. Of course enforcing certain laws in…

In theory, the EU data protection directive was supposed to protect us from companies with an EU presence (like Google) moving our data outside the EU - specifically, when we interact with a company with an EU presence, they're not supposed to move data to any country with lesser data protection laws. That seems reasonable - they set up shop in the EU, after all, they chose to follow our law.

Instead, we ended up with the US-EU Safe Harbour, which allows companies with an EU presence to move our data to the US, where despite a set of rules and certifications the company would have to follow, those rules still do not protect our data to the extent that it would be protected in the EU - when they're even followed.

Re: Google to close engineering office in Russia

#33

Post by _delirium »

briandear wrote: post #18
bgarbiak wrote: post #6

Knowing the government's of Russia ways of controlling the media and opposition, I understand and agree with those scared for personal freedoms. On the other hand, I would feel way better if similar law would be imposed in EU, so my data would stay within its borders and be protected by EU laws.

TLDR: it's unrealistic to require a company to follow every country's laws just because some of that country's citizens use a service based outside of that country. The concept of data being "stored" like it's a card in a library card catalog is an anachronism. The physical location is irrelevant. It's the policies and laws under which the companies must deal that's more important. Of course enforcing certain laws in…

> If I travel to the U.S. and buy something at a store, EU consumer protections don't apply, nor should they. If I make a telephone order from a U.S. shop, they don't have to comply with European law; I came to them.

The traditional law on this isn't quite that clear in the 2nd case. If you take telephone or mail orders and ship to other countries, you do run a significant risk of exposing yourself to the laws of the destination country. If you have no presence in the destination it may be harder to enforce any ruling against you, though, so countries traditionally did much of the enforcement via screening shipments at customs. If you were selling mail-order goods without complying with destination law (e.g. selling appliances legal in the source country but not meeting safety-testing standards of the destination country), the law would be enforced by simply confiscating your shipments. Once it's in, it's harder to enforce laws, but in principle you can still be hauled into court in the destination country for e.g. a product-liability lawsuit.

Re: Google to close engineering office in Russia

#36

Post by seanmcdirmid »

wslh wrote: post #24
icebraining wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if "the internet search engine company might retain some employees to assist in sales, business partnerships, user support, marketing and communications", won't they still have a local presence?

It careful says "might" and "assist". In the best case this means minimal presence in Russia that can be unplugged immediately. We don't know if this will happen using the Google company or transferring employees to a another entity and formally outsourcing it.

The presence could be purely vendors or a Russian company acting as a representing. More like a consulate, like they still have in China.

Re: Google to close engineering office in Russia

#37

Post by skj »

rurban wrote: post #14

Oh my, goodbye sanitizers? There's still work on the kernel sanitizer and a few other things to be done. Disturbing.

I don't believe anyone is getting fired, though it's true that a mandatory relocation will mean a lot of people choose to leave the company.

Re: Google to close engineering office in Russia

#38

Post by awson »

eldargab wrote: post #12
pavlov wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly do you consider propaganda? You don't believe that Google is shutting down their Russian office?

Reasoning. Internet became regulated in Russia, and what? How does this relate to hacking on V8 engine, for example? (They have such teem in Saint Petersburg) This article appeared just to support sentiment and noise around how bad/evil Russia is doing. No matter of truth or plausibility, all kind of noise just works.

This.

Re: Google to close engineering office in Russia

#39

Post by izacus »

cromwellian wrote: post #10
bgarbiak wrote: post #6

Knowing the government's of Russia ways of controlling the media and opposition, I understand and agree with those scared for personal freedoms. On the other hand, I would feel way better if similar law would be imposed in EU, so my data would stay within its borders and be protected by EU laws.

Actually, the NSA has a greater power to spy on data on foreign soil than on domestic soil. Ironically, although the 'legal' channels for subpoenaing data with warrants exposes data in the US to government demands, there's at least in theory, some kind of oversight by the courts (although we know they rubber stamp everything). I think the idea that data held within your home country is 'safer' may be a false sense of…

There's that small difference of actually being able to influence our own governments and changing what they give to US.

Which is still a huge difference than being exposed to mercy of an overseas government which gives us about the same consideration as it does to cattle and approves of torture.

Re: Google to close engineering office in Russia

#40

Post by raverbashing »

chkuendig wrote: post #30

Might be a coincidence, but they also just announced plans to rent 50'000 square meters of office space in Zurich http://www.handelszeitung.ch/unternehmen/google-investiert-d...

I wonder why is Zurich a big part of Google's strategy as opposed to other places in Europe
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