Google services in Russia: problems with accounts, slowdown and exit from the market – what is happening

A Google account allows you to receive Gmail and access the services of the American corporation, for example, without it it is difficult to register in the Android operating system and use the Google Play application store; The Ministry of Digital Development announced on September 26 that creating accounts is becoming more difficult and that the number of SMS that Google sends to register in Russia is decreasing.

“Communications operators also recorded a significant reduction in the number of SMS sent by the company to Russian users,” RIA Novosti agency quoted a statement from the Ministry of Digital Development.

At the same time, SMS authorization confirmation for previously created accounts continues to work, but there is no confidence that this option will be maintained, the ministry believes.

The department did not specify how much less Google began sending messages. The Ministry of Digital Development did not respond to additional questions from RB.RU.

Google account shortage

As the editor of RB.RU was convinced, Google changed the way of creating new accounts and stopped sending SMS. Now the corporation does not send messages, but asks the users themselves to send the code via SMS. Messages are paid: one will cost 5 rubles. The code to be sent is generated after reading the QR code from the computer screen using the phone.

RB.RU employees were unable to create new accounts on September 26. No SMS was sent from the Moscow number. It was possible to deliver an SMS from a regional one, but Google reported that the limit for registering accounts on this phone had been exceeded and demanded that the number be replaced.

• Anna Kashnitskaya, founder of Russian tech startup Unisimka, was convinced that Russians were really having trouble creating Google accounts. The businesswoman shared with RB.RU a trick she discovered while testing a SIM card from the Georgian operator Cellfie.
• “It allows you to quickly register a new account in Gmail. The option is available on phones compatible with e-sim or with the Unisimka module installed. In this case, the number will be registered as a backup number. To register, you need a foreign bank card and a foreign passport,” the expert said.

Some users in Russia noticed in early September that they were unable to create new accounts. For those who had trouble signing up, Google asked them to “try again later.”

Google is aware of the problems that Russians have when registering new accounts and intends to maintain access to free services, the American company’s press service reported. “We are working to resolve these issues. “We continue to strive to keep our free services available in Russia,” a Google representative said in response to a request from Izvestia.

The Ministry of Digital Development considered that these types of interruptions could be dangerous for users. Due to the problems that arose, the agency recommended that Russians create backup copies of data, as well as switch to alternative two-factor authentication methods or use national platforms.

Member of the Board of Directors of ROCIT (Regional Public Center for Internet Technologies) Andrey Yarnykh believes that Gmail may not be secure due to the American Internet giant’s policy of abandoning the Russian online market.

Reasons for failure

Experts interviewed by RB.RU believe that problems with accounts may be associated with both a failure in the “SMS gateway” and the fact that the Russian authorities may be trying to limit the corporation’s work in Russia.

Lead Analyst of Mobile Research Group and Editor-in-Chief of Mobile Review Eldar Murtazin connected what was happening around Google services in Russia into a single process.

“Roskomnadzor blocks YouTube. These are not selective blocks, so today the SMS gateway and other services are blocked. We block everything, that’s why it doesn’t work. On Google’s part there are no restrictions of this type, everything comes from one of the departments,” says the expert.

Head of the Association of Professional Users of Social Networks and Messengers (APPSIM) Vladimir Zykov He adds that Google might actually “have lost its SMS gateway to Russia.” Another version is a more global strategy to stop user registration.

“If this is so, then we should expect Google to start expelling Russian users (by geolocation and phone number),” Zykov believes. At the same time, he added that “if Google wanted, it would have eliminated all the Russians in seconds.”

The expert urged Russians to actively switch to domestic services. For example, you can switch from mail to Gmail to Xmail.ru and save documents from the cloud using the Disk-O service, Zykov believes. Site owners should be prepared for reCaptcha to be disabled, and developers should be prepared for issues with Google Play. Russian mobile phone operating systems already support Android applications. Thus, Russians will continue to have access to Android applications that do not use Google services.

Zykov believes that Russia already has analogues of all Google services.

Android problems

ROCIT’s Yarnykh explained that the popularity of Google Mail in Russia is not associated with the conscious choice of Russians, but with a close connection with the Android mobile operating system, which runs the vast majority of smartphones (74% of Russians choose Android smartphones, Megamarket calculated in April).

On September 17, MP Anton Gorelkin warned Russians that Android could also start working intermittently, although no one publicly announced widespread problems with this operating system. The deputy explained that Google has not formally been present in Russia since 2022, as it complies with United States sanctions, but the equipment it left behind is not updated and sooner or later will stop working.

“And now what worries me most is not YouTube (this Google video service is slowed down in Russia), but the stability of the Android operating system, which also depends heavily on these servers,” said the deputy on his channel. Telegram. .

A day later, in an interview with the Parliamentary newspaper, Gorelkin clarified that there would not be a total collapse of the operating system; The downgrade of Google equipment could result in “a maximum slowdown in content download speed.”

Experts interviewed by RB.RU doubted that Android could stop working. Murtazin, leading analyst of the mobile research group, is sure that problems cannot arise with Google servers and most likely they are crashes. The expert cited Africa as an example, where “there are no cache servers,” but Android works.

“There are blockades by Roskomnadzor, blockades that, apparently, are going to increase. This will damage not only Android, but a whole range of services. And we are prepared, as Deputy Gorelkin said, for all this to fall apart,” Murtazin told RB.RU.

YouTube video hosting failure

The account issues were preceded by another massive outage to Google’s video hosting service, YouTube, which occurred in Russia on August 1. Since then, the service in Russia has not been fully operational. Google said it had nothing to do with the difficulties.

Roskomnadzor did not comment on the situation. A month later, providers, against the background of an exit of clients, began to accelerate hosting work, then Roskomnadzor demanded to exclude the use of technologies of “distortion, fragmentation and substitution of Internet traffic.”

The problems with YouTube were preceded by a series of statements that the service could be blocked in Russia. For example, Gazeta.ru wrote about this in July citing a source in the presidential administration. At the same time, the press secretary of the President of the Russian Federation denied that the Russian authorities plan to limit Russians’ access to the service.

But Rostelecom warned that the download speed and playback quality of YouTube videos for users in Russia may decrease, citing a problem in the operation of Google’s technology as the reason. At the same time, on July 24, Russian State Duma deputy Alexander Khinshtein called YouTube’s slowdown an attempt to reason with its owners and a direct consequence of the anti-Russian hosting policy.

Services that Google itself disabled

Google, which formally left Russia in 2022, is set to disable some services. The following decisions were carried out within the framework of US sanctions that came into force on September 12. The states demanded to limit the access of Russian industry to services that could help the military-industrial complex. Therefore, Google disabled the BigQuery service in Russia, which allowed working with large volumes of data.

On August 12, contextual advertising service Google AdSense also notified users in Russia that their accounts had been deactivated. Bloggers in the Russian Federation who make money on YouTube can no longer access the advertising network’s services. After the start of the military operation, Google also disabled monetization on YouTube and stopped displaying advertising on it, but the platform continued to exist in Russia.

At the same time, other Google services continue to work in Russia, although the American corporation does not earn anything from them, notes expert Vladimir Zykov.

“What kind of virtue is this? Why does the company do this? If this is a way for her to show “kindness,” then that’s fine. But this is hard to believe. Since Google is obviously one of the important elements of the information war and its services are used to spy on Russian citizens, its presence in Russia can be explained,” the expert believes.

On the other hand, says the expert, the founder of Google, Sergei Brin, arrived in Russia in 2008 and gave an interview in Russian to the NTV television network, where he congratulated the Russians for their victory over the Canadians in the World Championship. Hockey.

“Nowadays times are different, one cannot imagine such a thing, but given that it treated Russia well, one could assume: Google is still available in Russia, because Brin considers this to be his mission,” Zykov concluded.