Google is reportedly moving engineers out of its office in Russia to avoid increasingly restrictive Internet laws.
However, some employees will remain to focus on business tasks like sales, user support and marketing.
"We are deeply committed to our Russian users and customers and we have a dedicated team in Russia working to support them," said a Google spokesperson in a statement.
It has not yet been announced how many employees will relocate or exactly why the company is moving the staffers, but it is likely due to a law that is set to take effect next year. This law requires information on Russian citizens to be stored in Russian data centers rather than those located in other countries. If a company were to violate that law it could face penalties.
Most large tech companies store their data in centers around the world, with there not really being a link to the location of the data and the location of the user. This means that most of a user's data is not stored in the same country where the user resides.
Google has maintained operations for engineering in Russia since 2006, currently employing around 50 engineers, but Russian officials have increasingly become less welcoming to foreign tech companies. Google would not be the first large tech company to pull out of Russia. Adobe shut down its Russian offices in September.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has called the Internet a CIA project, saying he prefers to get his information from elsewhere. Russian officials have reportedly been advised to avoid Gmail, and legislation was recently considered that would forbid officials from discussing state matters on non-state run email accounts.
Another law also recently passed requires bloggers with 3,000 followers or more to register personal information with the government. This is largely seen as an intimidation tactic. While state-controlled TV stations generally offer pro-Kremlin views, bloggers and those on social media have been able to post their own opinions. These people played a key role in the political protests from 2011-2013.
Google has come out against Russia's Internet restrictions in the past. Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt said last year he was worried that Google was becoming more like China in the way it censors the Internet. Google search was closed in China in 2010 after it stopped cooperating with Chinese government censors.
"The changes in the political situation make it less viable, less feasible to maintain engineers here, and that is not even counterbalanced by the fact that engineers get cheaper by the day because of the [falling value of the] rouble," said Anton Nossik, a web entrepreneur who is often hailed as the father of the Russian Internet.
"There are a lot of counterproductive measures, not only [government] pressure but also the general unpredictability of how the situation will develop. One thing that is predictable is that it will develop for the worse. The only thing we don't know is how fast regulations limiting foreign activities on the Russian market will be adopted."
