Google Ukraine

History

2022: Google takes its employees out of Kiev

March 23, 2022 it became known that the Kiev office of Google is gradually being disbanded, and its employees are being taken out of the country by the corporation. Before the start of the special operation, about 50 people worked in the Ukrainian office of Google. How many of them have already left the country, and how many are only going to do this, Google does not report. More details here.

2020

Google discloses user data in 48% of requests from Ukrainian authorities

Google reveals user data in almost half of the requests of the Ukrainian authorities. This became known at the end of September 2021 from the corresponding report of the company.

According to statistics cited by Google itself, in the second half of 2020, the corporation received 21 requests from the Ukrainian authorities for 31 accounts for the disclosure of user data, 16 of which were urgent. The percentage of requests for which "some data" were provided is 48%, i.e. 10 out of 21 requests were granted. Most of the information was provided on urgent requests - The proportion of requests for which "some data" were provided.

The share of urgent requests for disclosure of data on Ukrainians turned out to be the largest - 63%

The largest percentage of information disclosure (77%) was registered in July-December 2018, when Ukrainian government agencies asked to disclose personal data related to 48 users and 54 accounts. In Russia, the share of requests that end with the disclosure of information by the end of 2020 year amounted to 18%.

Most often, requests for personal information are associated with the services Gmail, YouTube, Google Voice and Blogger. The amount of data that is disclosed depends on the legal basis. But in some cases, Google can disclose not only registration data, but also the content of emails, as well as IP addresses.

Percentage of requests for which information on Ukrainians was disclosed

Google receives requests, including as part of the investigation of civil, administrative and criminal cases, as well as ensuring national security. The Company may refuse to provide the necessary information.

As part of diplomatic procedures in July-December 2020, only one request was submitted to Google in Ukraine. Such requests are usually made by Governments through mutual legal assistance.

Ukrainian government agencies showed the greatest activity in the second half of 2019, when 51 requests for 63 accounts were submitted. For 39% of them partial data were received.^[1]

Opening of R&D center in Ukraine

In January 2020, it became known about the opening of To Ukraine its own research and development center. Google It was launched on the basis of the office of the company CloudSimple, which the American technology giant bought in November 2019.

R&D The resource resource ain.ua, citing its sources, announced the start of work of the Ukrainian-center Google. The company confirmed the information. In January 2020, CloudSimple employees officially switched to Google.

It became known about the opening in Ukraine of its own research and development center Google

We can confirm that CloudSimple joined Google Cloud, which will help us work to improve the integrated VMware migration solution by expanding support and adding new user capabilities, Google said.

Thus, the third Google office in Eastern Europe appeared in the capital of Ukraine, possessing its R&D center. Two other offices are located in Poland and Hungary. The Kiev office is located in the Astarta BC, it employs about 30 people.

CloudSimple was created in 2016. By the beginning of 2020, the company has three offices - in the USA, India and Ukraine.

Before the launch of the R&D center in Ukraine, the local Google representative office was engaged only in working with Ukrainian advertisers. Now the company has begun to develop in the country.

This is a fairly common practice in the IT-Business: than creating a regional office from scratch, it is faster and easier to buy a local partner with whom you have already collaborated and know. In addition, it allows you to simultaneously obtain rights to the necessary developments - intellectual property.

CloudSimple has created a solution that allows you to easily migrate VMware virtual machines from your own physical servers to public clouds, such as Google Cloud or Microsoft Azure, while remaining in your usual VMware environment.^[2]

Notes