Not the header you expected to see, right? Who would even think that the giant of the Internet every now and then will suddenly go away in 2022?
Well, I should admit that there has been a clickbait used:) To be fair, Google stays with us for a bit more and don’t even plan to announce bankruptcy…in some countries. Recently, it has been declared that the company filed bankruptcy in russia. What was the reason for that?
As it is known, right after russia invaded Ukraine, majority of the world-leading companies stopped their activity on the territory of the terrorist country. Google, in its turn, suspended all the advertisement and selling of cloud-computing services in March 2022.
“Google told the Financial Times the seizure of its account had “made it untenable for our Russia office to function, including employing and paying Russian-based employees, paying suppliers and vendors and meeting other financial obligations”
However, the tech giant decided to continue to provide russians with its services (those free of charge). It includes Android, Play, Google Search, YouTube, Gmail and Maps. In addition to this, Google offered to its russian employees to help getting out of the country, providing them with a job in another country’s office. Those who disagreed -> are left without job now though.
Google explained its decision to leave free service as the only opportunity for russian people to “have a window” to the civilized world and read quality information and news.
To be honest, for me, as for Ukrainian , the situation is a bit controversial. From the one side, company tries to save its human capital, remain loyal despite any obstacles, and still hopes to come back to such a big market after the war is over and everything becomes stabilized. On the other hand, such actions, especially from such influential companies like Google, put the brakes on russian’s isolation which is the only “peaceful” leverage from the world to stop the genocide of Ukraine.
What do you think? What would YOU do being on the place of Google’s decision-makers?
References:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/05/18/google-russia-bankruptcy/
https://www.ft.com/content/9f4faa67-9057-4270-9e8c-f247ffc21f78