Google downgraded media in Cyrillic in search results in Kazakhstan

Google , Facebook , Twitter and other major resources underestimate media content in Cyrillic in Kazakhstan in search results. The expert called this decision "splashes" from the sanctions policy of Western countries against Russia

After the start of a special military operation in Ukraine , producers of Cyrillic content began to experience difficulties with its distribution not only in Russia, but also, for example, in Kazakhstan. This was announced by the president of the Internet Association and the owner of the news aggregator and site audience meter in Kazakhstan Mediametrics.kz, Shavkat Sabirov, speaking on Thursday, June 22, at the Night Telecom Forum conference (an RBC correspondent was present at the event). According to him, Google, as well as its online platform YouTube and other foreign IT companies, such as Facebook (owned by the American Meta Platforms, whose activities are recognized as extremist in Russia and banned), Twitter, etc. underestimate the content of the media and media in Cyrillic in the search results on their resources in this country.

According to Sabirov, the technical infrastructure of the Central Asian countries in the context of the growth of universal digitalization is “developed quite well”, but “last year brought significant restrictions and multinational companies have adopted "common rules for such restrictions". First of all, because of such a policy, media sites suffered, Sabirov clarifies. He explained that Google did not specifically impose bans on Russian media, but simply restricted all Cyrillic content. This also affected the media in Kazakhstan. “The countries of Central Asia got only “splashes” from the sanctions policy of Western countries against Russia, and it immediately became difficult to work in a situation where traffic decreased by 3-5 times,” said the president of the Internet Association.

At the same time, Sabirov draws attention to the fact that the main problem now is not a decrease in overall traffic, but difficulties in finding content. The president of the association believes that in such conditions it is necessary to make non-standard decisions for the work of the media, "after all, this situation will last for a very long time."

The Ministry of Information and Social Development of Kazakhstan (supervises the media industry) refused to answer questions from RBC, redirecting them to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. RBC sent a request to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Kazakhstan, as well as to Google.

How Google restricted Russian media

After the launch of a special military operation in Ukraine, Google limited the display of Russian government publications in the recommendations of its services in order to "derail disinformation campaigns on the Internet." At the same time, the social network Facebook banned Russian state media from showing ads and monetizing them on the platform. Last March, Meta was recognized as extremist in Russia and banned in the country after the decision to change the rules of content moderation: innovations allowed users from some countries ( Ukraine , Poland, Georgia) to publish posts calling for violence against the military involved in Ukraine. Twitter suspended ads in Russia and Ukraine in early March, and introduced warning labels for Russian state media such as RT and Sputnik. Because of this, Roskomnadzor resumed slowing Twitter downloads in Russia, saying that it was disseminating "inaccurate socially significant information on the subject of a special military operation in Ukraine."

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NTV editor-in-chief Alexandra Kosharnitskaya noted that after the restriction was introduced, Google offered them to return the channel to YouTube, provided that all social and political broadcasting would be removed and only entertainment would remain, but the channel refused. Now NTV, according to her, is watching how Google is “desperately pessimizing and cutting out any even the slightest bit pro-Russian content that enters it either by piracy or has not yet been blocked by some ridiculous accident.” The representative of Gazprom-Media Holding only briefly noted that the pessimization of Cyrillic traffic had no impact on the company's business processes. Against this background, the holding is developing domestic platforms, including the national video hosting RUTUBE, he added.

“Directly on our resources, we can neither confirm nor deny - traffic from Google is generally volatile, and holding platforms with divergent audience interests - from news to entertainment materials, one way or another compensate for each other," said Shkulev Media's business development director Holding Anatoly Rozhkov. From his point of view, the solution to such a problem for the media can be to expand the audience through the diversity of interests and demand for content, “working with all available channels and platforms for contacting the audience in order to avoid the hegemony of one channel, which will reduce the dependence and influence of any unmanaged on our part factors."

In the media holding Independent Media, Google did not notice a decrease in traffic on its own sites (VOICE, Men Today, Rules of Life, Grazia, The Symbol, etc.). According to Independent Media Business Development Director Tatyana Malysheva, the holding, on the contrary, recorded an increase in search traffic, including from Kazakhstan: + 91.2% of users and + 135% of visits in the first five months of this year compared to the same period last year .

Konstantin Kolesov, head of the strategic development of data transmission of the block for the operator business of VimpelCom (provides services under the Beeline brand), Konstantin Kolesov only noted that, for example, the YouTube service remains highly popular among the operator's customers and still ranks first in terms of traffic consumed. At the same time, he emphasized that VimpelCom cannot know which videos users are watching - Russian-speaking or foreign, as they see only the general traffic, which is formed from all the videos they watch. “We can only say for sure that there have been no drastic changes, the overall YouTube traffic continues to grow,” Kolesov summed up.

Representatives of MTS, MegaFon, NMG and MIC Izvestia declined to comment. The press service of Channel One did not respond to a request.

What else was said about Google

Google has stopped serving the so-called Google Global Cache servers (used to speed up the loading of Google services, including YouTube content) in Belarus and Kazakhstan over the past few years, Valery Shimak, a representative of Beltelecom, one of the main Belarusian telecommunications companies, said at the same event. Beltelecom feared that Google would take away the servers altogether, but "this did not happen."

Earlier, at the end of spring, according to RBC sources, Google decided to remove some of the Google Global Cache servers from Russia. In the spring of 2022, the company notified several Russian providers of the termination of contracts for their service. At that time, experts assumed that this could affect Internet prices for users, since the shutdown would lead to an increase in operators' costs due to an increase in cross-border traffic. They also predicted an increase in network load and a decrease in channel stability, since all traffic will come from several foreign channels, which may have less bandwidth reserve, be less resistant to DDoS attacks, etc.