Technological siege in Russia: Airbnb blocks reservations, Google stops advertising and Uber breaks its links

Technological pressure on Vladimir Putin is intensifying.

Joe Biden has already advanced that the impact of the sanctions would be achieved to a large extent "by suffocating Russia's access to finance and technology for strategic sectors of its economy and thus degrading its industrial capacity for the coming years."

According to the US president, Western actions will cut more than half of Russian imports in terms of technology, but such a purpose seems long-term, less forceful than other measures such as the expulsion of the SWIFT interbank communication mechanism suffered by some of the largest financial institutions in the country.

For now, microchip companies have adhered to the Western proposal, including North American Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).

"

to complying with the new export control," the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) said.

However, this employer warned that this market is not particularly relevant, as it is the recipient of only "0.1% of global chip purchases";

in any case, that jointly represents the not insignificant figure of

, according to data from the IDC consultancy.

Other actions in the technological field are being noticed earlier, specifically those of the platforms, although many times they hit the user more than the high-ranking business community that the Putin regime may support.

has just joined the cataract of ruptures and has suspended its operations in Russia and Belarus as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as the co-founder and CEO of the company, Brian Chesky, has advanced on his Twitter account.

This benchmark in rentals had already announced its plan to temporarily house up to 100,000 refugees for free.

"This means that calendars will be blocked so that new reservations cannot be accepted in both countries until further notice.

," says the company, consulted in this regard by this newspaper.

Yandex, the Russian Google, on the precipice

Uber is withdrawing from Russia: it did not operate there but it does hold a stake in

, the Russian technology giant.

In fact, the

is raising its voice because the financial consequences of the sanctions could lead to its bankruptcy, as it cannot fulfill its commitments.

Yandex accounts for around 60% of

from Russia (thereby surpassing Google), it is based in the Netherlands (with the tax treatment that this implies) and, in addition to Moscow, it is listed on the North American technology index Nasdaq (until this week, when it has suspended listing).

Precisely, although the company has not been directly sanctioned, the suspension of trading for more than five days would open the possibility for investors to demand full repayment of their bonds, plus interest.

"

currently have sufficient resources for the redemption of all these bonds", the company has officially acknowledged.

In addition, Yandex is very present in the home delivery and transport sector, in which it has joined paths with Uber.

Last August, the US company divested all of its holdings in Yandex companies for food, delivery and messaging, and also reduced its exposure in the transportation branch (Yandex.Taxi) to 29%, a project of exit that was accompanied by the purchase option agreement so that the Russian firm could acquire the rest of Uber's shares in that area (valued at the end of last year at 8,000 million dollars).

The three Uber executives who were part of the Yandex.Taxi steering committee have left the firm this week, replaced by a single non-executive representative tasked with overseeing the final divestment.

Meta, Google and Microsoft are planted

The US tech giants have already taken action, mainly aimed at reducing (mis)information coming from the East.

from hosting campaigns on their platforms or generating revenue through advertising on those

sites .

The two Russian media are considered speakers of the Kremlin's policies and Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, has singled them out for spreading "lies to justify Putin's war", which is "a clear attack on freedom of expression According to Sputnik's interpretation.

The visibility of these informative marks has been drastically reduced.

Meta, for example, has blocked them on Facebook for the entire European Union.

The company had already encountered criticism from the Putin regime for verifying some untrue content, a

task that had forced the US company to limit its presence in Russia.

Likewise, Twitter labels the information from the media and journalists close to the Russian government, "reducing the visibility of this content," as Yoel Roth, head of Integrity for that platform, explained.

For its part, Microsoft has proceeded to remove RT from its app store and change Bing's algorithm so that RT and Sputnik results go down in searches.

ByteDance, the parent company of the TikTok social network, has also turned off the profiles of these two media, and it is a Chinese company, which makes geopolitical balances without condemning Putin's attacks.

Conforms to The Trust Project criteria

Know more

• Russia

• Uber

• Google

• microsoft

• Facebook

• Twitter

• Belarus

• Goal

• airbnb

• European Comission

• tik tok

• Ursula von der Leyen

• European Union

• Instagram

• Youtube

• Ukraine

• Joe Biden

• Vladimir Putin

InnovationGoogle will follow in Apple's footsteps and block the tracking of users between apps

CompaniesThe Russian oil giant Lukoil calls for the war in Ukraine to be stopped

War Ukraine - RussiaHow to protect ourselves from Putin's 'psychological missiles' 4,000 km away: "The worst is uncertainty"

See links of interest

• Last News

• When does the 2021 Income start?

• Income 2021

• Work calendar 2022

• Economy Podcast

• Davis Cup, live: Roberto Bautista - Gabi Adrian Boitan

• Davis Cup, live: Carlos Alcaraz - Marius Copil

• DSC Arminia Bielefeld - FC Augsburg

• International - Salernitana

• Alaves - Seville