As reported by RBC, some Russian Internet service providers have received notifications from Google informing them that they are terminating service contracts for Google Global Cache servers that allow them to speed up the loading of sites, particularly YouTube.
Some servers were shut down, wrote Dmitry Galushko, Head of the Ordercom law firm, on the Telegram channel. According to him, several providers, including the Orenburg-based Radiosvyaz company, were notified about the disconnection. This operator received a letter, which was sent by one of the Google subsidiaries, located in Ireland. In the document sent, the disconnection of some of the servers was explained by “legal innovations.”
Meanwhile, RBC learned from employees of Radiosvyaz that the cutoff occurred as early as May 19, although the company got official notification about it several days later.
The same letter was received by the MFTI Telecom service provider. Experts believe that this may be due to the fact that this company is under sanctions from Western countries.
At the same time, MTS, Rostelecom and Megafon have no problems with downloading Google content.
In this case, a subsidiary of Google, which operates in Russia, plans to apply to the Arbitration Court with a lawsuit to declare bankruptcy. As reported by Izvestia, this became known as early as May 18. This company will not be able to fulfill its financial obligations as of May 22 and “expects its own bankruptcy.” A representative of the company said this in an interview with the newspaper. In particular, he said that after the bank account of Google was arrested, the Russian office could no longer continue its operation. He clarified that Google will not stop its work in Russia, and users will be able to continue to use this service despite the fact that the company initiates its own bankruptcy.
According to media reports, Russians will be able to continue using such services as Google Play, YouTube, Google Maps, GMail, and others.
At the same time, if Google's subsidiary company operating in Russia is declared bankrupt, it will not be able to engage in commercial activities in the territory of the Russian Federation, said the Mobile Research Group analyst Eldar Murtazin.
According to Ivan Samoilenko, B&C Agency’s managing partner, the bankruptcy of the Google branch is a consequence of the fact that the company simply does not want to comply with Russian laws although the reputation of the company itself is unlikely to suffer from this.
Back on December 24 of last year the court issued an order to fine Google for 7.2 billion rubles ($116.87 bln.) This was done because of the fact that this company refused to remove prohibited content. As a result of disobedience to the Russian laws, proceedings were initiated against the company to enforce the fine on May 1, 2022.
According to RIA Novosti, Western countries and the United States have been imposing more and more new packages of harsh sanctions on Russia since the start of the special military operation in Ukraine. As known, gold and foreign currency reserves have been frozen. The Kremlin believes that all these sanctions are an economic war. However, our country was prepared for such a scenario. The Central Bank of Russia is taking measures to stabilize the situation on the foreign exchange market. Unfriendly states have to pay for the supplied gas in rubles now, which some European countries have agreed to not to threaten their industry, because the dependence on Russian gas in European countries is quite high. No real alternative to Russian gas has been found so far, although EU countries are desperately making such attempts.
In addition, the Russian government has prepared a plan to counter restrictive measures. It is very extensive and includes dozens of different initiatives. All in all, its financing will require about 1 trillion rubles ($16.23 bln.)