Google, Microsoft and Adobe have started to pull people and resources from Russia amid ongoing tensions with the West and concerns with new censorship laws due to take effect from next month.
According to iTWire, Google has ceased its R&D operations in Russia and has started to pull engineers. However, Google is not the only technology company to scale down operations. Microsoft has moved its Skype development team out of Russia, while Adobe has completely pulled out.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has grown suspicious of the West, global companies, and the Internet. In April, Putin said he believes the Internet was a front for the CIA. He pointed to the Internet"s origins as a joint US military and academic project as proof, and warned Russians against using Google as the traffic flows through to the US and is monitored.
Earlier this year, Putin signed into law new regulations that requires technology companies that are collecting data on Russian citizens to store that data in local datacenters. Originally to take effect from September 2016, Putin moved the deadline to next month.
To comply with the new law, companies like Facebook and Twitter may need to keep data stored locally which means they must keep servers on Russian soil; this is expected to provide a surge in local storage and server demands for the region.
Source: iTWire