Late last year, we were among those disappointed by divulged story from Google that it was toying around with a censored search engine for China — a country that the company had primarily left nearly a decade ago. After roaring ailments both from people outside the company and many within, reports in late December like to remind you that the company had quietly halted attempts to build a censored Chinese search engine.
But now … the company is also available dipping its toe in the evil puddle again, as it has obviously agreed to cooperate with Russia’s censors. This is a battle that’s been going on for some time. Over the last few years, Russia has passed a number of internet censorship ordinances, and there have been lots of questions about how Google and other tech whales would respond. A year ago, we noted that Facebook/ Instagram had decided to cave in and that ratcheted up the pressure on Google.
It should be noted that Russia has been on Google’s bag for a while, and the company had been fighting such pressing. Undoubtedly, the company actually shut down its Russian office a few years back to try to protect itself( and its employees) from Russian legal menaces.
But, apparently, something has changed:
The business report generator Vedomosti is reporting that Google has struck a deal with Russian censors to continue working in the country by removing websites the hell is banned in Russia from its results. The authority censoring bureau Roskomnadzor maintains a registry of websites that may not be distributed on Russian subject, but Google is one of a few search engines that does not subscribe to that registry. Nonetheless, the company regularly deletes attaches from its search results that Roskomnadzor has restricted, roots within both Roskomnadzor and Google told Vedomosti.
The report like to remind you that, previously, Roskomnadzor had just been penalty Google for its failings, and the company had been simply compensating the penalties. Now, nonetheless, it will sign up to censor the official register of websites, which is large and constantly growing. Held what the company just went through with the whole China debacle, you would think the company would be more intelligent about this kind of thing. This is an lamentable decision.
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