Google Inc. will be moving its engineering operations out of Russia after the government implemented new laws requiring more data to be stored in the country, according to recent reports.
Even though it will be closing its engineering unit in Russia, the California-based company still plans to boost investment in Russia in 2015 and will be not be pulling its sales and support out of the country.
It is not the first time that Google has moved engineering teams from one country to another, it has done this before, in Finland and Sweden for example.
A Google spokesman wrote in an email Thursday:
“We are deeply committed to our Russian users and customers and we have a dedicated team in Russia working to support them,”
Google is a major technology company in Russia. Yandex, which operates a search engine in Russia, is currently the dominant search engine in the country.
However, according to LiveInternet.ru data, Google’s share of the search market in Russia increased to 31 percent in the third quarter, up from 27 percent in the first, while Yandex dropped to 60 percent from 62 percent.
Google has been running into problems with regulators and new legislation recently
Only a couple of days ago Google announced it will be shutting down its Google News service in Spain. The service in Spain will end on 16 December before a new intellectual property law goes into effect in January. The new Spanish law will allow publications in the country to charge fees to sites like Google News if their content appears on their webpages.
