Google to close engineering office in Russia

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/12/us-russia-internet-google-idUSKBN0JQ03E20141212

by azov • 12 years ago

283 282 12 years ago

jmnicolas• 12 years ago

"Google Inc has plans to shut down its engineering office in Russia amid a crackdown on internet freedoms and a law regarding data-handling practices"

Should they close their offices in USA then ? (yes I'm being sarcastic here)

ars• 12 years ago

People are so used to their freedom, that they (rightly) get upset over even small losses of it.

But it makes them forget what real loss of freedom is, and think that what they lost is somehow comparable. They just don't realize how bad it can really get.

eldargab2• 12 years ago

Stupid propaganda...

pavlov• 12 years ago

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

eldargab2• 12 years ago

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.

bgarbiak• 12 years ago

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.

cromwellian• 12 years ago

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 security.

cma• 12 years ago

Except they have cross sharing agreements with MI6, we can't spy on our own citizens thoroughly, so you do it for us, you can't spy on your own citizens thoroughly so we'll do it for you.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement

izacus• 12 years ago

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.

nisa• 12 years ago

* If you are an citizen of the United States.

I think the idea that data held within your home country is 'safer' may be a false sense of security.

Widely deployed encryption is the only solution. The 'safe' EU data is monitored by the BND in Germany they send the data to the NSA. It's likely similar everywhere else.

briandear• 12 years ago

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 certain countries is impossible if the company doesn't have a presence in that country. In that case, it's up to the user to decide if they agree to whatever terms of service are offered within the country I which those terms are enforceable through the contract law process. Ultimately if a Google user doesn't like the US law or terms of service offered, it's up to the customer to go to another service. It's unrealistic, not to mention crazy to force an Internet company to follow 170+ different country's laws when those laws are often contradictory. Instead, it might be good for an Internet company to have a statement that outlines what jurisdiction under which they reside in terms of enforcing terms of service agreements. Most have this contract language already, but to make it clear to the user would allow them to make informed choices about the services they use.

The alternative if to wall off the internet by physical geography. So Google.com wouldn't work in France, only Google.fr. That regionalization of the Internet is a horrible idea. You end up with Google.cn if you do that. If you use an American service, it's expected that it follows American law. You, the user, are entering their place of business (virtual or not,) therefore their jurisdiction is the jurisdiction of record. 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. That extrapolates to the virtual world as well. However, if a company does have a physical presence in a country, then obviously they are compelled to comply with local law. However that could be argued when it comes to online services -- just because WalMart has distribution centers in China doesn't mean that the WalMart in Nebraska has to follow Chinese law.

Really I would argue for full and transparent disclosures AND I would support an Internet Privacy Treaty that provides reciprocity or equal protection between two countries. So a French Google user has the protections they expect but an American DailyMotion user has the protections they expect and claims could be mediated in either country. I am not a lawyer, nor a huge expert, but I do have some experience with my iCouch company (online therapy.) We have customers from the Middle East who see therapists based in the US, and it's explicit that the customer's interaction will be governed by the locale in which the therapist is located/licensed. It would be a virtual impossibility to have to conform with every country's laws.. We can't realistically stop visitors from certain places; should we be liable? Of course not. The visitor is the one that makes the choice to visit us or not. I am not as articulate about this as I would like, however one can see the maze that this starts to reveal. It's not a simple question of "where is the data stored."

k-mcgrady• 12 years ago

> "Ultimately if a Google user doesn't like the US law or terms of service offered, it's up to the customer to go to another service."

True. But if Google doesn't want to lose users they will change to accommodate them. Google's business is based on knowing as much about as many people as possible. They need as many users as possible and I'm sure they will and do bow to certain countries laws when it feasible.

vertex-four• 12 years ago

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.

_delirium• 12 years ago

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.

kevingadd• 12 years ago

This is clearly a pragmatic move that protects them (and their customers), but it feels telling to me that Putin's violent anti-LGBT crackdown - literally threatening the lives of many Google employees, not to mention Google's customers - wasn't sufficient cause to close or relocate their offices.

p_kolya• 12 years ago

How does engineering office relate to censorship?

wslh2• 12 years ago

If they have local presence they can be pressured in any way in a Russian jurisdiction.

icebraining2• 12 years ago

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?

evgen2• 12 years ago

Engineering offices usually require access to code repos and back-end production servers. This is the path you need to follow if you want to put pressure on a company or flip an employee to act as a spy within the company on your behalf. A sales office or a lot of user ops can be treated like remote contractors and only given access to a limited subset of the company that is needed to do their job. You can also burn a sales office and walk away from it in a heartbeat, but engineering offices usually have people who have valuable company info and state in their heads...

rurban2• 12 years ago

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

seanmcdirmid4• 12 years ago

Is Brian Bershad still involved in this? I assume they are talking about the St. Petersburg office.

skj2• 12 years ago

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.

rurban2• 12 years ago

I assumed that they will not fire their best engineers. But will their families relocate to Europe, having to speak weird languages and spend a lot of money? Zurich is super expensive.

dschiptsov• 12 years ago

What else "Sharikovs and Shvonders" would expect?

tinco• 12 years ago

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.

icebraining2• 12 years ago

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.

frozenport• 12 years ago

No! The EU doesnt require its citizens to show ID when logging onto public WiFi!

supergirl3• 12 years ago

Some EU countries do. Some want to. Why don't you get informed before talking?

Italy is one: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_Italy

The law is meant against terrorism. I am sure Russia has a good excuse too.

danmaz749• 12 years ago

Putin is increasingly cracking down on any possibility of dissent and threat to his power, whatever the consequences to the Russian economy, and this of course scares foreign companies who work there - even if, with the recent fall of the ruble, Russian talent is even more affordable now.

I'm afraid (I have friends in Russia) that we're going to see more of this.

osipov19• 12 years ago

That's a very myopic view and here's why -- virtually all governments in the world are becoming increasingly authoritarian because of the global economic crisis and the civilian unrest that it provokes. For example, replace Putin in your sentence and you'll get "United States is increasingly cracking down on any possibility of dissent and threat to it power". You can support that statement with facts about police in Ferguson, US conflicts with China in Asia Pacific, and of course US crackdown on dissidents like Assange and Snowden. You can also try that exercise by replacing Putin with "Greek government".

Demonizing Putin is what your government wants you to do to avoid seeing the bigger picture. The real question is WHY is Putin cracking down on threat to his power?

happyscrappy4• 12 years ago

Russia is only a threat to its own citizens and border countries who are not members of NATO. The West was bringing Russia closer, now that trust is gone and will take a long time to repair.

icelancer2• 12 years ago

virtually all governments in the world are becoming increasingly authoritarian because of the global economic crisis and the civilian unrest that it provokes

I agree with the former very much. Not sure the latter is the reason why, but it's a decent enough theory. The fact that authoritarianism is the general trend globally is very disturbing - and there is little to no civilian opposition to this.

okatsu5• 12 years ago

I won't disagree that demonizing Putin is what the government wants us to do. I remember how the U.S. funded Saddam to use chemical weapons on Iran and then overthrew him "for the sake of the people."

However, it should also be kept in mind that we're still far away from the Russian regime where speaking against the government (releasing classified documents doesn't count) or being a homosexual will land you in jail.

So yeah, no one's perfect, but I'll stick to North America for the time being, thanks.

aragot• 12 years ago

The real question is WHY is Putin cracking down on threat to his power?

Sounds like a rhetorical question but I don't guess the answer. Do you mean Putin is doing it because of the civilian unrest?

Demonizing Putin is what your government wants you to do to avoid seeing the bigger picture.

No-one is demonizing Putin, they're telling facts. The bigger picture is, censorship is bad, and if US defends the freedom of opinion in Russia, it's good because we can turn those arguments back to the US gov.

Yizahi3• 12 years ago

Putin and most of the Russian government are criminals, so it is not hard to see why they are doing it.

tptacek• 12 years ago

False equivalence watch: what Snowden did was so outside the bounds of established law that he'd face prosecution in virtually any administration in American history. His arguments mitigating the offense might be important at a trial, but we can't know, because he fled the country rather than face that trial. The attention paid to Snowden is not in itself evidence of increased authoritarianism in the US.

When I think of Putin, I don't so much think of things my government says (in fact, Americans don't generally pay that much attention to what the government says; our legislature is skirting single-digit approval ratings).

I think more about news stories about how 4chan-style prank videos of kids having gay porn posters put up on their wall are reported as factual news by Russian state-owned television:

http://www.advocate.com/world/2014/12/06/watch-russian-docum...

bad_user7• 12 years ago

I'm a Romanian, a country that's pretty close to Russia and I am one that suffers for what the Ukrainians are going through with Russia, because I can see how the same thing could happen in Basarabia (Moldova) and there are already signs of that. Russia historically has been occupying territories, getting rid of any political dissent by effectively killing or deporting people, while crushing their national identity. I hate Russia for what they did after the secret pact from Yalta, for the soviet induced hunger that happened after that and for the years of communism we endured.

It's been only 24 years since we escaped their control and apparently we've been lucky, but now Putin is destroying any chance of having a peaceful neighborhood. War is effectively at our borders and Putin is to be blamed.

So spare me rhetoric about every government or country being the same. No, they are not equal. And I hope the Putin administration will receive what it deserves.

danmaz749• 12 years ago

Look, I've been to Russia, I know people there, and there is NO WAY you can compare the level of democracy and rule of law we have in western Europe or the US to what there is in Russia now. Lots of Russians were ready to exchange some of their freedom, and to accept a very high level of corruption, as long as their global living standards improved. But now Putin is violating that pact. We'll see what happens.

dionidium• 12 years ago

You can support that statement with facts about police in Ferguson

Not really. Ferguson represents a lot of things, but I don't think there's any evidence that it's part of some national crackdown on dissent. How would that even work?

kofejnik• 12 years ago

I'd say, we are not demonizing Putin hard enough

curiously5• 12 years ago

Do you think Putin can keep this up with the falling currency and economy crashing? Or does he have a stronghold on everyone with guns that nobody could take him down?

I wonder if Russia could change to a more democratic and liberal tone after Putin. I mean, it seems like Putin wants to go back straight to Soviet era.

duaneb3• 12 years ago

I mean, it seems like Putin wants to go back straight to Soviet era.

There were many different soviet eras, each with their own problems and strengths. Putin's doing his own thing. Just because he's becoming more authoritarian doesn't mean he's becoming Soviet.

protomyth• 12 years ago

The current price of oil is well below the price Russia needs to sustain its economy. Depending on the source, Russia needs $100/barrel to maintain its economy. Putin was making comments that $80 is very bad. The bakkens (fracking in ND) can probably go as low as $40/barrel in some areas and still be ok.

drzaiusapelord2• 12 years ago

My Russian friends on Facebook love Putin. Why would they overthrow him? He's given them everything they wanted: revenge on West for the cold war, bullying neighbors, a toughguy image, punishing homosexuals, and up until recently a higher oil price (coincidental of course). Sorry I just don't believe that the Russian people are interested in peace or human rights. Putin reflects the will of majority. I think Russia's culture is just broken.

I don't think a lot of Americans understand how corrupt and messed up that culture is. Ever do business there? I have. Its madness compared to the west. They're not Europeans. They're Russians. They have their own ideas of what passes for justice and international law. I'm getting a little sick of hearing how Putin doesn't reflect the average Russian's political will. Sadly, Putin does.

Isolation and sanctions are the only rational move at this point. We've gone down this road before several times and recently with Iran. Do you guys really think the average Iranian wants Ali Khamenei overthrown? Come on.

danmaz749• 12 years ago

I don't have a crystal ball, but a lot of people in Russia are worried that if Putin falls, the next one will be even worse than him. I don't even know what to hope now.

chkuendig• 12 years ago

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...

raverbashing2• 12 years ago

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

tribaal4• 12 years ago

Because it's been on position 1 of best standard of living in the world pretty consistently, and Switzerland is geographically central, well interconnected, business-friendly, and not part of the EU?

Just a guess :)

EDIT: It seems Vienna is on top since 2010, my bad. But position 2 is not so bad, and the other points still stand :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercer_Quality_of_Living_Surve...

dagw• 12 years ago

Simpler tax laws and more employer friendly labor laws would be a guess. Perhaps it's also easier for Google to get residency permits for its workers in Switzerland.

richmarr• 12 years ago

Tax.

justincormack2• 12 years ago

London is too. They are planning to build a huge office in Kings Cross to replace the current offices, although it has been delayed apparently to make it bigger[1]. This is much larger than Zurich and almost the size of Mountain View it seems.

[1] http://www.building.co.uk/google%E2%80%99s-review-of-%C2%A36...

snarfy• 12 years ago

It's because of the laws. Privacy laws, secrecy laws, tax laws, etc.

tormeh• 12 years ago

I would guess ETH Zurich and, to a lesser degree, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne has something to do with it. That's basically Europe's leading engineering and software universities right there.

kyledrake2• 12 years ago

As one of the world's most neutral countries, Switzerland has historically been a pretty good place to establish an autonomous, neutral, predictably-regulated business when governments are going crazy (which, frankly, they have been lately). If the rest of the world goes nuts, they'll be able to pull out and move base to Zurich, which is not likely to be subject to a war or other major political upsets.

Switzerland is historically infamous for having these qualities, it's why even the Nazis used them to deposit money. They also don't have things like DMCA laws. War aside, let's say the corporate lobby gets them to push the screws on DMCA to make it worse. Hello new Youtube HQ.

TLDR: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8740289

jkaljundi2• 12 years ago

Google has been extremely active in Zürich and Switzerland for 10+ years: http://www.lunchoverip.com/2007/09/inside-google-z.html

Google Panoramio is also based there: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panoramio

robk2• 12 years ago

Word is that most employees are being offered full relocation (generally to Zurich) which I have to think will be well received.

This goes for both Moscow and St Petersburg.

caio1982• 12 years ago

They did the same thing when they first closed the engineering office in São Paulo (Brazil) years ago. If I remember correctly.

riffraff2• 12 years ago

which I have to think will be well received.

sorry I can't read the english here, do you expect it to be well received (why? seems like it would be a though choice for many people even with a relocation package) or are you expressing hope it will be?

_wmd• 12 years ago

The value of the rouble has collapsed over the past year, I think he means tech workers would only be too happy to leave.

tonfa2• 12 years ago

At least in term of compensation, Zurich is hard to beat.

duaneb3• 12 years ago

do you expect it to be well received (why? seems like it would be a though choice for many people even with a relocation package)

I think he was saying it would be preferable to move than to be fired.

robk2• 12 years ago

Sorry for the colloquial English. I meant that employees will likely take advantage of this as a good alternative to leaving Google. It is financially beneficial to earn in CHF versus RUB if you don't mind Zurich.

raquo2• 12 years ago

Disregarding the job/compensation aspects, I'm sure many Russian Googlers would love a chance to live in a real functioning country, even if temporarily.

piquadrat• 12 years ago

I guess it's not a coincidence then that Google announced the opening of new offices in Zurich today.

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u...

Couldn't find an English source

delroth• 12 years ago

http://www.europaallee.ch/content/dam/PDF/Ueber_Europaallee/... for an english source.

sschueller• 12 years ago

Zürich is going to be difficult with the new ruling from Parliament to reduce the permits for people outside of the EU. (1)

Yet Google announced opening another office today.

(1)http://mobile2.tagesanzeiger.ch/articles/29666497

tonfa2• 12 years ago

Though 1) everyone in switzerland is still wondering how they are going to implement it without breaking bilateral relations with EU and 2) it doesn't mean reducing permit, it means having a limit (vs. free flow with Schengen), and before Schengen Google did not seem to have much issue getting permits for its workforce

aleksi• 12 years ago

… and just 2 months ago Microsoft closed Qik/Skype development office in Moscow, relocating willing developers to Czech Republic.

ThinkBeat3• 12 years ago

it is worrying what is happening in Russia but much less so than what is going in the USA.

Google, Facbook etc tightly integrated with the nations intelligence agencies, mining the data found there to make secret lists that could result in assassinations, indefinite detention and torture.

Russias actions are for the most part overt, and rightly criticized, what the US does, it does so covertly.

If anyone speaks about the actions that the Us takes in secret they are hunted to the end of the world, and must seek refuge in Russia.

We hear a lot about Russian dissidents leaving Russia because they have their freedom limited. Snowden and Julian Assange have had their freedom limited to much more so than any of the Putin dissidents. (With the exception of the possibility that a couple of them have been assassinated)

Remember that the air plane carrying the President of Bolivia was forced to land and be searched by American allies under the suspicion that Snowden might be on-board. Can you imagine AirForce One being forced to land, and be searched by Russia or China? Becaus they suspected it might be carrying a dissident? I dont think so.

schrodinger• 12 years ago

Sorry, but I really don't buy the argument that USA is worse than Russia in this respect. Snowden, while I totally applaud what he did and would love to see him pardoned, or protected under whistleblower laws, leaked a ton of highly classified information. Again, I think he did the right thing, but him being prosecuted is not the same as "if anyone speaks about the actions the U.S. takes in secret they are hunted to the end of the world." Plenty of people have overtly criticized the U.S. government without any fear of retribution.

Perdition• 12 years ago

Yeah, if Snowden had of betrayed the ~~KGB~~ FSS/FIS he would have fallen down some stairs onto some bullets a long time ago.

nemanja4• 12 years ago

If Snowden blew the whistle (to the minimum extent possible to inform the public about what was happening) and stayed in the U.S. to face the music, I could buy the argument that he was a hero and deserves a pardon. What he did instead is that he fled to our biggest foe and revealed publicly a lot of tactical information that only serves to hurt U.S. intelligence operations abroad. Further, we will never know what he sold to Russia to earn his welcome. Now he's a part of a propaganda machine of a tyrannical regime. Sorry, but that makes him a Russian agent, traitor and a dirtbag.

dchichkov3• 12 years ago

Well, he is somewhat right. Snooping tech that three-letter-agencies have here is likely to be well beyond anything Russia can possibly have. I've seen some of it in Russia about 15 years back (to my shame, as a student, participated in the development) and even though my code was kinda ok-ish, this was literally child's play ;) You could monitor small percentage of phone calls, but it is a far cry from bulk wiretapping, voice recognition and search/analytics/social-network-analysis that is probably in place here.

happyscrappy4• 12 years ago

It is easy to criticize the US but the entire West is working together. Is Assange or Snowden safe in Germany or Norway? The longer Europeans pretend that the problem is only the US the easier it is to have business as usual.

icantthinkofone• 12 years ago

Yeah they would never do that in Russia or China.

DangerousPie• 12 years ago

With the exception of the possibility that a couple of them have been assassinated

That's pretty much the point though, isn't it? Of course the US is going to prosecute someone who reveals their state secrets on such a massive scale. Every country would. However, what they don't do is routinely assassinate and imprison political opponents.

In the same way, I agree with you that the cooperation between internet companies and the NSA/CIA is very concerning. However, I believe this still pales in comparison to the amount of oppression and state-control over the media that you see in Russia.

What the US is doing is definitely not right. But I don't believe we should let our disappointment about that trivialize the totalitarian state that is Putin's Russia.

muglug3• 12 years ago

Espionage (what the US programs were for) is very different than the widespread victimisation of those who are seen as undesirable.

The Russian government is actively conspiring to silence hundreds of thousands of people. Whether it's because they were unfortunate enough to have been born gay, or because they want to talk about Russia's annexation of eastern Ukraine, or whether they just don't think Putin should be in power forever.

Call me crazy, but I think that's worse than passive collection of reams of data.

debacle3• 12 years ago

The US government is also actively conspiring to silence hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people, and they have been doing so since before Martin Luther King's days. They're just far more subversive about it because they're sitting on reams of money.

mkhaytman• 12 years ago

There's really no need for the comparisons. Both versions are terrible, who cares which is worse. How we go about fixing it should be the topic of discussion.

osipov19• 12 years ago

Are you still repeating that "putin hates gays" meme?! Read the facts: http://gallery.mailchimp.com/d0e55f3197099944345708652/files...

icelancer2• 12 years ago

Pretty clear fallacy of tu quoque:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque

Based on your spacing and carriage returns, it's pretty obvious you aren't American and have an anti-American bias. Not saying the US is a shining example of civil rights - they certainly are not - but your comment adds nothing to the discussion.

osipov19• 12 years ago

That's plain wrong. The OP is arguing that US violations of civil rights are far more significant and consequential than the ones in Russia. OP is right because US claims the mantle of world leadership, has the world's largest military force, and a dominant economy. US should be held to a higher standard.

nemanja4• 12 years ago

I suppose what you are saying is that prosecuting someone for a trial by a jury of their peers (with access to the best defense you can imagine) is much worse than poisoning people with radioactive materials??

At the end of the day, Snowden was a member of the U.S. Intelligence community and entrusted with classified information and, for better or worse, he willfully broke the law. What do you expect, that he would not be prosecuted? Do you think if that happened in Russia, Putin would have any reservation from assassinating him before he managed to flee to his biggest foe and reveal who-knows-what to earn his welcome?

minimax4• 12 years ago

Assange has a TV show on Russian state television, and Snowden is a guy who fled to Russia with literally thousands of stolen NSA documents and now does TV propaganda with Vladimir Putin. Those are not dissidents. Those are Russian agents, whether they realize it or not.

dragonwriter• 12 years ago

They are western dissidents, whether or not they are also Russian agents.

Its not uncommon for dissidents forced to resort to exile to be leveraged for propaganda purposes by regimes opposed to the ones with regard to which they are dissidents, but that doesn't make them any less dissidents.

Why do people want to make things exclusive that are not?

ThinkBeat3• 12 years ago

Does that mean that North Korean dissidents who speak about against the regime when they escape are CIA agents?

jazzyk2• 12 years ago

You are using the exact "reasoning"/propaganda that communist regimes used in Eastern Europe in the past. EVERY dissident who fled to a Western country was automatically labeled a spy.

zarriak• 12 years ago

The biggest thing about the difference between Russia and the United States is the end goal of their actions. Putin is ensuring his power base, while the US is trying to stop terrorism. I don't like what they are doing but this is what the NSA thinks what works to stop terrorism. If you look at both President Obama and President Bush they did close to the same things regarding national security. It may be a faulty assumption, but this leads me to believe that there are things that these programs protect the western world from. The people who work for the CIA and NSA aren't idiots and they definitely have committed some horrible actions, but they wouldn't being continuing these missions if they were futile.

I would like to live in a world without religious extremism, but it has and will always exist. They utilize the poverty and illiteracy of certain places in the middle east to make teenagers believe suicide bombing is the way to get to heaven. Humanity is facing many existential crises and this is the way we are currently handling one. It is definitely not an optimal solution, but it doesn't matter if we can't solve our ever increasing CO2 emissions and the many other problems resulting from greenhouse gases.

ThinkBeat3• 12 years ago

You have drunk the cool aid.

Everything the US does is to maintain their global position of power. The end goal is obedience to the US and control over as many natural resource and territories as possible. Either directly through military force, or preferably through subversion, coercion and integration.

This is not unique to the US, it is what empires do, and the US is now the biggest empire ever created. We have and continue to cooperate with, fund, and protect some of the most brutal regimes the world has ever seen.

Ours is not a noble mission with just wars to free the slaves of the world and introduce democracy. The only way democracy is acceptable is if the American candidate is electable. If the natives happen to make the wrong choice, coups happen, sanctions happen, directly military action happens.

These are not conspiracies, extreme leftist propaganda or the ramblings of Americas enemies, they are historic facts.

Are there other bad regimes in the world? Of course. Have their been regimes worse than the US? That depends. If you only want to talk about life in main land US, of course much much worse than that. If you include what regimes supported by the US has done it is hard to say yes or no.

curiously5• 12 years ago

How many Americans would move to Russia vs Russians moving to America?

Apples and oranges my friend. Using the same academic tone, one could make even North Korea sound like a great civilized place to be, but then when you get there it isn't anything.

jkaljundi2• 12 years ago

Acronis, one of best known Russian tech companies, is slowly moving to Estonia: http://www.investinestonia.com/en/about-estonia/news/article...

There are also quite a few who are moving from Russia to Ukraine.

Also remembered this: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-28/luxoft-to-move-500-...

drzaiusapelord2• 12 years ago

I can't imagine doing business with a Russian owned company at this point. An autocratic regime has never been good for internet or software freedoms.

I'm very glad I chose Sophos over Kaspersky for our shop.

notjackma10• 12 years ago

Why discriminate against a Russian company over something that may or may not happen?

Russia has elections and they have laws which affect businesses based there - pretty much like every other country out there.

As the article states, Google is moving its engineers but the sales team is staying, so this reorganization is less to do with politics and more to do with Google centralizing its engineers in Zurich - just like MountainView.

Kurtz79• 12 years ago

Then you might also want to check where the device you are typing from (or your monitor, router, smartphone...) has been manufactured.

mc322• 12 years ago

Kaspersky is interesting. I like their security labs but I am always aware their founder was FSB (KGB-trained) and has good relations with senior personnel (nomenklatura) there, so, while I don't think it's automatic that Kaspersky would do the Russ gov 'favors' it's not out of the question either however Wired has reported as such.

tlear• 12 years ago

Perhaps their executives do not want to have an 'accident' landing Sheremetievo?

They are smart to get out now, probably should have been done earlier

ivankolev• 12 years ago

I really hope Jetbrains, a Russian company, do not secretly work with the government to plant backdoors in all its IDE offerings :). It's fascinating but uneasy feeling how some of the best tools for software development come from Russia

NARKOZ• 12 years ago

It’s time to recognize the Internet as a basic human right. That means guaranteeing affordable access for all, ensuring Internet packets are delivered without commercial or political discrimination, and protecting the privacy and freedom of Web users regardless of where they live.

http://time.com/3631377/internet-cia-putin-berners-lee/

Google to close engineering office in Russia

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