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In Telegram Clampdown, Kremlin Hits Google

In the fierce attempts to stop the work of Telegram, Russia’s telecom regulator Roskomnadzor entered Google’s IP-addresses in the register of resources, the access to which is banned in Russia. Experts say that the worst scenario could lead to the pullout of Google from the country.

On Sunday, Russian Internet complained about the problems in the work of Google resources. In particular, it was impossible to visit google.com and google.ru sites or use Gmail. 

Roskomnadzor in a statement said that Google failed to comply with the agency’s requirements and “in violation of a court verdict continued to allow Telegram Messenger LLP to use its IP-addresses for activities in the territory of Russia.” In this connection some IP-addresses of the American company were entered in the register of prohibited information.

The founder of the information security company Vee Security, Aleksandr Litreyev, said in his Telegram channel that some other users have were unable to get access to another popular Google service reCAPTCHA that protects websites against Internet bots. Users could not authorize on a number of sites, even when entering the correct login and password. Roskomnadzor denied any involvement in this problem and denied reports on inclusion of google.ru pages in the register of prohibited websites.

A representative of Google said on Sunday that the company is aware of the events. “We know that users in Russia do not have access to some Google services,” said a spokesperson for Google. 

Last week, on April 18, the IP addresses of the Cloud Cloud service were included in the registry of forbidden resources, as Telegram used them to bypass the block in Russia. After the IP addresses of Telegram were blocked, the company began using cloud services from Google, Amazon, Microsoft etc and switched new addresses as Roskomnadzor blocked previous addresses. Roskomnadzor head Aleksander Zharov the agency had no choice but to block addresses by thousands.

CEO of Diphost hosting provider, Philip Kulin the registry of banned resources had first included 118 Google IP addresses out of 600 known, by the evening of Monday the list of 118 IP addresses from 1002 known. “Most likely, Google increases the number of known IP-addresses from its pool, as a number of their services still do not work properly in part [in Russia],” said Aleksei Korolyuk, CEO of the provider Reg.ru.

Roskomnadzor failed to explain why the agency switched from blocking IP addresses of Google cloud service to banning the addresses of the main site.

Some IT industry players fear the developments may force Google to pull out from Russia. “Of course, Google will lose money, but Russia’s share in the company’s earnings is less than a percent,” Klimarev suggested.




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