Reuters reports that Google is facing trouble in Russia this week, as the country has threatened a slowdown of the company’s services unless it deletes content that’s been banned by the government.
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Ahead of tomorrow’s Congressional hearings, Google has published its findings on Russian interference related to the 2016 U.S. election. In several reports, Google provided an overview of how a Russian-linked organization used Ads, YouTube, and other services to spread information, as well as upcoming steps to counteract it.
As rumored earlier this month, Android Pay is continuing its international expansion by launching in Russia. Google’s mobile payment system is now available in its 11th country and is live with a slew of support from local retailers, applications, and bank partners.
Following a 2015 ruling of anti-monopoly behavior involving Android, Google has settled with Russia’s regulatory agency in an out-of-court deal. Google will allow apps and competing search engines to be pre-loaded on devices, with a new tool to select the latter.
Not even a week after being requested to pull The New York Times app from the Chinese Apple App Store, both Apple and Google will have to pull the LinkedIn app from their respective app stores. According to The New York Times, the removal comes after a court ruled that LinkedIn had violated Russia’s data protection laws.
In what Bloomberg describes as ‘a 90-minute interview peppered with expletives,’ Russia’s new Internet advisor has said that he wants to force Google and Apple to pay more taxes.
German Klimenko is pushing to raise taxes on U.S. companies to help level the playing field for Russian competitors such as Yandex and Mail.ru […]
Bloomberg says that he has an interesting ally in this aim …
Google’s Moscow offices
Google has started to block AdSense and Adwords accounts in Crimea, and Google Play services will cease on 1st February, reports TechCrunch. The moves are being made in order to comply with sanctions on the Crimea region of the Ukraine imposed by the US Government.
Free services, like search, maps and gmail are all expected to remain unaffected, but all services involving payment to or from Google will cease, said Russian site Lenta.ru.
“Google’s prohibited from providing paid services in the Crimea,” a source at Google told Lenta.ru. “In addition, Google cannot make payments to anyone in the Crimea. It is now technically impossible, as almost all international banks have ceased to make payments.”
The US joined the EU in imposing economic sanctions in protest at Russia’s annexation of the Crimean peninsula, which legally remains part of the Ukraine. TechCrunch notes that the political conflict could escalate, with the possibility that Russian government may retaliate by blocking the sale of US imports into Russia–an important market for many US companies, including Google.
Apple terminated its own agreements with app developers in the region earlier this week, and has announced that all sales of Apple products and services will cease as of 1st February. Other companies are similarly ceasing business in the region, including both Steam and PayPal.
The update to Android 5.0 for the Galaxy S5 has been slowly rolling out across a variety of not-United-States countries over the last month, starting with Poland and then more recently making its way to Spain. Now, preceding what will soon be the software update’s widespread availability, devices in Russia and Malaysia are being offered (via SamMobile) some Lollipop goodness.
Google released the latest version of its Transparency Report today, revealing data about government requests the company received between June and December of 2013. According to the report, Google received 3,105 requests to remove 14,637 pieces of content within that time period, which brings the total number of requests received by the Mountain View corporation up to 6,591 for the entirety of 2013, a figure that’s about 60% higher than the previous calendar year.
Google is planning to shut down a Russia-based engineering office, The Information reports, following the nation’s passage of strict regulations on how technology companies are allowed to store data. The new law requires the company to store any the personal data of any Russian citizens within the country’s borders.
Rather than comply with that requirement, Google is ready to just pull out of the nation entirely. Employees based in Russia will be given the chance to work for Google in another location. Around fifty employees are expected to be affected.
Despite the fact that Samsung called the Galaxy Note Edge a “limited edition concept device” at launch, we now have word (via SamMobile) that the phone will actually be making it to quite a few more countries. It’s still to be seen how widely the phone will be available, but it’s likely that only a few selected stores within these countries will actually carry it. The device will be priced around €899 in Europe, and for an idea as to when it will launch, it will supposedly be available in Denmark on December 12th.
Earlier today, a huge number of Google account usernames and passwords were leaked onto the internet via a Russian Bitcoin security forum. This afternoon, Google has officially responded to concerns about the more than 4 million supposed login credentials, saying that none of the company’s systems were breached in order to obtain the data. Furthermore, the company says that it found that “less than 2% of the username and password combinations might have worked,” and that those who were affected have been notified.
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In a blog post today detailing its Ground Truth data collection program for Google Maps, Google announced some new features rolling out to users in Taiwan, Russia and Malaysia. As part of the Ground Truth program rolling out to 5 new countries today, Google is also making its Google Map Maker and Report a Problem features available for users in Taiwan, Russia, and Malaysia to contribute:
Today, we’ve reached our 50th Ground Truth country with the addition of five new countries: Taiwan, Malaysia, Poland, Romania, and the last regions of Russia. We’re also rolling out Google Map Maker and Report a Problem—our crowdsourcing map tools—to Taiwan, Russia and Malaysia, giving anyone in those locations the ability to share and contribute their local knowledge directly to Google Maps.
Google also notes that it will be publishing more articles over the next week sharing more details of how its Ground Truth program and Map Maker work to let others contribute to improving Google Maps.
About a year later than first expected, Samsung has finally announced its first smartphone running Tizen instead of Android, the Samsung Z.
While this particular handset is only launching in Russia initially (sometime in Q3), it’s notable in a couple of ways. First, the spec – while not cutting edge – is pretty decent. Powered by a 2.3GHz quad-core processor and 2GB RAM, it has a 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED display (though only in 1280×720 resolution) and the fingerprint sensor that has so far been exclusive to the S5. It’s not the low-end spec many had expected from Tizen …
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While technology hasn’t quite reached the stage of allowing us to watch the Winter Olympics from within Google Street View, you can now take a virtual wander through the host city of Sochi. The games are scheduled to take place there from 7th to 23rd February.
Street View coverage in Russia also now includes Vladivostok, Irkutsk and Yakutsk – though you may want to put on your coat for the latter: as the city with the greatest seasonal temperature swings on Earth, the lowest recorded winter temperature was a bracing -83.9F (-64.4C).
Google also added its first imagery in Slovenia, making the central European nation the 56th country to be added to Street View.
Check out some other cool (not all of them quite so literally) places you can visit on Street View with our roundup here.
Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Liechtenstein, Netherlands, Russia, Switzerland, #GooglePlayMusic is here http://t.co/u6zajHQKrM
— Google Play (@GooglePlay) October 1, 2013
Google has been adding support for various Google Play services in a lot of new countries recently and today it continues that trend with the roll out of Google Play Music in seven new locations. The company made the announcement in a tweet on its official Google Play Twitter account today and confirmed that the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Liechtenstein, Netherlands, Russia, and Switzerland now all have access to purchase music through Google Play.
Earlier this week Google rolled out its Google Play Books service in a handful of new countries as well, including: New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand & Vietnam.
Google for a while now has been allowing businesses in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, France, Ireland, and New Zealand hire photographers through its Business Photos program in order to capture 360-degree Street View-like imagery for the inside of retail stores and other businesses. The feature allows users to get a 360-degree, interactive tour of a business without ever leaving Google Maps. Today, Google announced it is expanding the program to seven new countries for both photographers and businesses:
Today we’re announcing the expansion of the Google Maps Business Photos program to seven new countries including: Belgium, Czech Republic, Germany, Poland, Russia, Singapore and Switzerland.
Google announced today on its Official Blog some that it began rolling out some new enhancements for Google Maps with the addition of famous mountains such Kilimanjaro in Africa and the Everest Base Camp in Asia. Imagery for other mountain peaks is included in today’s update, including: the tallest mountain in Europe; Mount Elbrus located in Russia; as well as the highest in the Western and Southern Hemispheres, Argentina’s Aconcagua.
Google also shared a detailed post on its Lat Long blog that details the process of collecting imagery for today’s update.
Mozilla’s Firefox browser will kick Yandex to the curb this winter in favor of Google as its default search option in Russia.
Yandex became the primary search engine in Russia for Firefox builds roughly three years ago, and it currently sports a 60 percent market share. Their agreement is now set to expire Dec. 31, with Google slated to take the reins. The Mountain View, Calif.-based Company maintains the lead as the world’s dominating search engine; although, it only has a meager 26.5-percent of the market share in Russia.
According to TheNextWeb:
A Yandex spokesperson says they were notified by Mozilla of the imminent change on June 1, and points out that the company will continue to develop and distribute its own Yandex-branded, customised Firefox browser (at least until the end of this year, under the terms of the aforementioned agreement).
The latter version evidently sports Yandex as the default search engine.
Yandex also says Mozilla’s decision will likely not impact its market share in Russia significantly (they estimate a 1.5 percent loss over the next few months).
[…] Yandex adds that the impact on its revenue and profitability will be negligible.
Google and Mozilla’s global, three-year deal allegedly runs around $900 million. The agreement is a win for Google, after Twitter notably teamed with Yandex in February.
The microblogging service gave the Russian search engine permission to meld its pipeline of public tweets for real-time search results. Google paired with Twitter in 2009 to offer the same function, but the Internet powerhouses failed to renew their partnership in July 2011. The search engine now prefers its own Google+ social network combined with personalized search results, rather than integrating tweets into aggregated searches.
Detailed street-level imagery of landmark spots in Russian cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg is now available in Google Maps, Google’s Russia Product Manager Boris Khvostichenko announced in a blog post yesterday. Among other places, mapping aficionados can now tour Red Square, Moscow Kremlin, great palaces and parks, such as Tsaritsino, Peterhof, Kuskovo, the Oranienbaum, Alexandria, plus The Peter and Paul Fortress and the entire historical center of St. Petersburg (a UNESCO Heritage Site). St. Petersburg is Russia’s former capitol—now the country’s second largest city and northernmost megapolis. As for Google Earth enhancements…
