Google began blocking services for Russian companies under sanctions

Among those faced with blocking is the NTechLab company, which recently fell under EU sanctions , a source told RBC. The interlocutor in GOOGLE at the same time claims that there have been no changes in access to services in RUSSIA recently

Google has begun blocking corporate Workspace services, including mail, cloud storage and others, by Russian companies that are under US sanctions , Kommersant writes, citing sources.

The names of the companies that have encountered this, the publication does not name. RBC's source in the it market said that among the organizations affected by the blocking was the developer of the NTechLab face recognition system (fell under EU sanctions in mid-July).

The company later confirmed to RBC that it was disconnected from Workspace on August 9. Employees used services such as documents and spreadsheets to work with some international clients. The blocking did not affect the data of the company and its customers, NTechLab said. “We sent a request to Google, but have not received a response yet,” the company said.

One of Kommersant's sources in a large IT company said that after the services were blocked, employees could not access the mail, use electronic document management through Google Docs, which creates the risk of financial and reputational losses. Another interlocutor of the publication claims that about 30% of all corporate information of Russian companies is now stored in Google Workspace.

A source close to Google told the publication that there were "no intentional changes" to access to existing Workspace services in Russia. The source of RBC says the same.

“We can confirm that there have been no recent changes in access to existing Google Workspace services in Russia and that if any company in the world violates our terms of use, this may affect their access to Google Workspace,” the source said. RBC on Google.

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In the mailing that Google sent to Russian IT companies, the blocking is justified by “spam messages,” a Kommersant source said. Softline, which is a distributor of Google Workspace solutions, noted that an account can be blocked if the rules for using the service are violated. In addition, an error may occur when sending more than 500 emails daily and/or more than 500 recipients at the same time. Softline receives requests from corporate clients, but there is no surge in blocking, the company added.

The interlocutor of the newspaper in the IT market is confident that Google will continue to block Russian organizations that have fallen under US or EU sanctions, and may do so without warning. Google Workspace services remain common among small and medium-sized businesses in Russia, says Yevgeny Fenyushin , DIRECTOR of products at MyOffice. According to him, this is due to the fact that companies are used to this software and are not affected by the regulation on import substitution.