Kommersant learned about the blocking of Google Workspace services to sanctioned companies

Google began blocking Google Workspace corporate services to Russian companies that fell under Western sanctions, writes Kommersant, citing sources in two large IT companies.

“After blocking services, company employees cannot access corporate mail, use electronic document management through Google Docs, because of which there is a risk of financial and reputational losses, almost all important documents and correspondence remained in Google’s corporate storage,” said one of them.

Another told the publication that Google Workspace stores about 30% of all corporate information of Russian companies. Many companies, according to him, delayed the transition to alternative sites, hoping that Google would warn in advance about the blocking.

As the newspaper found out, Google itself in its mailing list argued the blocking with “spam messages”. The company can indeed block accounts for sending letters to more than 500 recipients at once or more than 500 letters a day, says Kirill Vinokurov, head of the Softline cloud solutions development department (distributor of Google Workspace solutions). “But on commercial versions of services, there is still a larger margin for sending / receiving letters,” he emphasized. A source close to the American company said, in turn, that any changes in access to Workspace services in the Russian Federation “were not intentionally introduced.”

At the same time, MyOffice Product Director Evgeny Fenyushin drew attention to the fact that Google Workspace is popular among small and medium-sized businesses, for which regulatory restrictions on import substitution, as a rule, do not apply.

Last June, the Russian subsidiary of Google filed a statement to the Moscow Arbitration Court about his own bankruptcy, explaining that he foresees the impossibility of fulfilling financial obligations “due to the arrest of a bank account. As Vedomosti noted in February, most large state-owned companies have had formal bans on the use of Google Docs and Google Drive services for work purposes for several years.

It was previously known that Microsoft will not renew software licenses for Russian corporate users from September 30, 2023. The reason is that the US company can no longer accept payments for license renewals for Russian accounts. The technology corporation suspended the sale of new products and the provision of services in Russia after the start of a special operation in February 2022. In the summer of the same year, the company limited the ability for Russian users to install Windows 10 and Windows 11. In April of this year Microsoft completely stopped the warranty service of Xbox game consoles in Russia.