
Why I hate Google, or some thoughts about “open” technologies - angeldar
Hi. I am not the writer, and english is not my primary language, so sorry if there are some errors in my text.
I just want to tell you a little story about me and google.<p>I am living in Crimea. Maybe you know where it is, and the events of the last year, may be not, but this post is not about it.
It is not about politics, it&#x27;s about technology.<p>Due to the sunctions of the usa government - usa companies must to stop import and export of tech products and services with Crimea.
Blocked Apple app store, blocked Google play market, blocked Odesk - it hurts, but I was ok with it.<p>But google has really pissed me.<p>Google has blocked:
Android documentation - www.android-developers.com - 403.
Golang - https:&#x2F;&#x2F;golang.org&#x2F; - 403.
Angular.js - Web page is not available. But works while I am using Tor.
Google app engine - 403, now I can&#x27;t use Udacity, and other services that uses GAE. Maybe some companies do not even know that their users cant get to websites.
Chromium - 403, Google Code with documentation and all the projects unrelated to Google - 403.
And so on.<p>Yes, I know how to use Tor and i2p. But I don&#x27;t see any reason to use google powered technologies and invest my time, as developer, in them any more.<p>So, I have a question - why do we need such an OPEN technologies, that can be BLOCKED tomorrow?
Today - it&#x27;s me, but who knows what will happen tomorrow, and which countries or companies will decide to block their, so called open, tools that you use.<p>I&#x27;m sorry that this is happening and I really believe that the Internet and technology should be above politics.
At least technologies, which are presented as open.
I made a conclusion for myself about corporations, technologies and tools I will choose to learn and work with tomorrow.
I hope my message will cause someone else to think about it.<p>Thank you.
======
infinitesoup
_Blocking Property of Certain Persons and Prohibiting Certain Transactions
With Respect to the Crimea Region of Ukraine

...

Section 1. (a) The following are prohibited:

...

(iii) the exportation, reexportation, sale, or supply, directly or indirectly,
from the United States, or by a United States person, wherever located, of any
goods, services, or technology to the Crimea region of Ukraine;_

See: [http://www.treasury.gov/resource-
center/sanctions/Programs/D...](http://www.treasury.gov/resource-
center/sanctions/Programs/Documents/ukraine_eo4.pdf)

~~~
throwaway000002
Is this action specific to Crimea, or are there separate documents that extend
the sanctions to Russia? (I can't navigate the treasury website to answer this
for myself.)

If it doesn't extend to Russia, then it's easy to conclude the sanctions are
irrational. Crimeans are, for the most part, powerless to the actions of
Moscow. At least that's what I feel. Only the submitter truly knows the
support or lack thereof of the populace towards the actions to which the
international community is responding.

If there is support for Moscow, then s/he should write to Putin and demand
that something be done to placate Obama and reverse the situation. If there is
no support, s/he should write to Obama and ask how s/he can help action
against Moscow. Anything else is simply being ignorant to the fact that the
situation is really war by any other means, irrespective of how life may seem
to go on normally wherever s/he may be living.

------
smnrchrds
We've been suffering this for ages in Iran. But in retrospect, it has been a
blessing more than a curse. For example, until a year ago, Android Market and
later Play Store were unavailable in Iran. Even now, many (most?) popular apps
are unavailable for Iranians, e.g Facebook, Messenger, etc. This has given
rise to a series of new start-ups, aiming to fill the void left by major
multinational corporations. Right now more than 90% of the smartphones in Iran
are android-based and most people have Cafe Bazaar (Play Store alternative)
installed on their phones. The same thing with Amazon and Digikala.

It's not as good for the consumers, but it has made it a very good time to be
an entrepreneur in Iran. I wonder if it was not for all the sanctions and
censorship, would we have what we have now.

But as I said it on HN elsewhere[1], please stop using App Engine for your
projects. Simplenote, Udacity, etc. have been inaccessible to Iranians not
because they chose to, but because they use Google as their hosting platform.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7142783](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7142783)

~~~
angeldar
Thanks for sharing your experience, this is new point of view on the situation
for me.

------
dmytrish

        the Internet and technology should be above politics.
    

\- I am not sure about this, sometimes politics threatens the Internet itself.
Putin clearly considers the Internet to be "a CIA project" and Russia is
heading to its own walled network where you won't need Google technology
anyway. Haven't Github and Youtube been blocked in Russia already? Even more,
don't be surprised if one day you are arrested for mere fact of using Tor/i2p.
So don't blame Google much, it's what Crimeans have chosen themselves: mirage
of the "rich" and "mighty" state over freedom and democracy.

~~~
angeldar
I wrote "should be", of course now it is not.

Yes, youtube and github were blocked for some hours, maybe 1 day, because of
strange decisions of some strange people. But it was fixed. Now, I am blocked
from another side of the world, and it seems - for a long time. I don't know
what will happen tomorrow - everything is possible, but my message was not
about this. It's about tools, that are looks like an open, or free - but at
any moment they can become inaccessible.

------
krschultz
Sanctions can be a bitch. But they're better than people shooting at each
other. Sorry that you are on the receiving end of it.

The Android documentation has always been a point of consternation for me. As
far as I'm aware, it is not open source. It might be licensed as such, but I
haven't been able to find a repo to clone that has all of the docs in it, or
more importantly a place to submit back patches. You an open issues against
the docs on AOSP, but it would be nice if they would just take gerritt changes
for it. That would help everyone, and then in your case you could just clone
it and have a local copy.

~~~
bumpcat
IMHO sanctions are never better than anything and are unfair by definition.
You can compare them to antibiotic - destroying both good ones and bad ones.

Majority of people do not want any sanctions, no matter what side they are on.
It's the government and politicians that want it, not the people.

~~~
hahainternet
> IMHO sanctions are never better than anything and are unfair by definition.
> You can compare them to antibiotic - destroying both good ones and bad ones.

But antibiotics are better than most other options. That's why we use them.

> Majority of people do not want any sanctions, no matter what side they are
> on. It's the government and politicians that want it, not the people.

The people do not want war. Sanctions are a way of bringing pressure without
threats of violence.

~~~
bumpcat
People are free to do with their own bodies whatever they think is best. But
in Crimea people are being punished because Obama or some other idiot thinks
it's good to do so. I don't think it's fair that a group of corrupted
politicians get to decide the fate of a nation literally on the other side of
the planet.

Also preventing someone from accessing a public information or from doing
business is already a form of violence :( I wouldn't call it a form of
'pressure'.

~~~
forthefuture
> I don't think it's fair that a group of corrupted politicians get to decide
> the fate of a nation literally on the other side of the planet.

I'd suggest you direct that towards Russia then. You can't have it both ways.
You can't vote to join Russia, and then complain that you can't use your US
services. As common as it may be to think here, the internet and internet
services are products. America doesn't ever have to let you use its products.
The idea that you are now entitled to them because you've ever had them is a
fallacy, and your anger is misplaced because of it.

I personally watch [http://liveuamap.com/](http://liveuamap.com/) every day. I
think it's scary that a person could be trapped in their home by an invader.
But it's Russia doing that, not America.

------
fndrplayer13
Yeah that sounds incredibly frustrating and unfair from a personal
perspective. I wonder though if Google is legally compelled to do this by the
US government or if they've voluntarily agreed to block these sites with the
purpose of avoiding any questioning?

I think the question (I am not a lawyer) revolves around exporting of
goods/technologies. It feels wrong to me to consider a website `resident`
anywhere and thus subject to export embargos. I suppose that code lives on US
servers, though? Hmm.

~~~
lbotos
Sanctions are an interesting thing because I think a lot of people doing
business on the web don't know to what extent they are responsible to follow
them.

When I worked in internet infrastructure, we actively monitored and blocked
sanctioned countries from using the service. I don't think a lot of companies
do, e.g. AFAIK Amazon for AWS is supposed to. (I may be wrong and I'd love if
someone with more knowledge would share.)

------
sidcool
Apple has done the same. It's not their call, they have to follow Government
rules.

~~~
angeldar
Yes, I anderstand that there is not much they can do. From my point of view -
apple has always been from the proprietary technology. I do not know about the
development for an iOS, and I am sure that Аpple has blocked developer
accounts and the purchase of development tools - but at least I can get access
to all documents, videos, and materials about Swift or Objective C and
development directly from their website.

~~~
cmurf
Interesting. So you can still get full iOS documentation, and yet access to
Android documentation is restricted or cut off? What about Cyanogenmod? I
wonder what the pattern is here. Maybe it's worth pointing this out and asking
the question to eff.org? I'm a bit surprised at the difference in outcome
between two U.S. companies, I'm more surprised that the restriction happens
with OSS though. The fact it's OSS suggests to me there wouldn't be U.S.
exclusive repositories for this documentation.

------
atmosx
I'm all with you, but to tell you the truth I don't know realistically at
which point to draw the line between Google and the US Government. After all
Google is (primarily) a US based corporation. So if their government _impose
them_ to shut down access from crimea, how much choice does google have?

I'm happy that at least Tor works for you. I might use a router to route all
traffic through tor, pay for a VPN service or setup my own OpenVPN server.

From what I understand you can access websites like Digital Ocean or Linode or
any other US corporation and I also assume you can purchase services online
with CC from crimean/russian banks.

------
lbotos
Here's an interesting question. How do sanctions apply to Multi-national
companies? Is there a "home country" designation or some such thing? Google
has offices in Many countries.

I guess I'm asking, what makes them a "US" company vs. a US/HK/GB Company?

~~~
bumpcat
I could be wrong, but I think there isn't really such thing as "international
company" in terms of law. Even if they have multiple offices or factories in
many countries, each entity is registered as independent company in these
countries. The whole administration and management is internal, inside the
organization.

------
amirouche
Google is not OPEN technology. Tor is.

~~~
angeldar
Sorry, maybe I am wrong with the terminology. But, the title on the Golang
home page is "Go is an open source programming language that makes it easy to
build simple, reliable, and efficient software."

And on the [https://code.google.com/](https://code.google.com/) I see "Project
Hosting on Google Code provides a free collaborative development environment
for open source projects.".

~~~
thepuck
Open source means that the source is available and you are free to change it.
It does not necessarily have any other political or social implications.
"Open" and "free" don't mean somehow "universal" or have anything to do with
the limitations of criminal law not related to copyright.

I'm sorry you're in a bad situation, but the reality is that technologies
grant power, and some nations don't want their citizens empowered, while other
nations don't want their power through technology used by enemy nations
against them. In order to have some rule that governments can't do that, you
would require a higher, metagovernment, which would then have the same sort of
power and require the same oversight, requiring and even higher
metagovernment, and so on. Hence why government is always a scam...it promises
safety and justice the way the mob does, through violence and threats.

------
rayiner
To me, the bigger issue is the move to take things you control (your software
on your own computers) to what you don't control (cloud services). Why should
my ability to write a letter he dependent on what happens to some company in a
different country?

------
bumpcat
If it's true, then this is so unfair that I literally wanna scream... Android,
Golang, Angular.js, Chromium, are all open-source. Why the hell they are
blocking access is beyond me. Are they _really_ forced to do this???

~~~
chrismcb
Because it is an American law. Now, if the source was forked and hosted in
another country, people might be able to access it. Of course then the access
would be up to the host country and the destination country

------
pskittle
I'm sorry you cant access udacity. use vpn or get hola (a free chrome plugin)

~~~
angeldar
Thank you, I am not going to leave Udacity. Sad, but Chrome updates and
plugins - are blocked for me too. I will think about vpn. Just hope the
Udacity will not block me (=.

------
mbz
I think you meant "free" by "open". In that case, just remember that "if
something is free you are the product".

~~~
Oletros
Apart that the "you're the product" is a fallacy, golang, AOSP, etc are not
only free, they are open source

~~~
mbz
how that's a fallacy? Google's cash cow is its ad platform.

~~~
Oletros
And the product is ad space, not the user using the service

------
chippy
>"It is not about politics, it's about technology."

I think that it probably is about a technology company acting because of
politics.

------
viktorsovietov
well, google's not your bitch, you know

~~~
dang
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