Google has forced to stop selling Play Store applications in Russia

Zoom in / Google Sketchbook for Russia National Day 2016

Google no longer offers paid apps or paid app updates to Russian users. A new support page, first noticed by 9to5Google, says: “Google Play has blocked the download of paid apps and updates to paid apps in Russia since May 5, 2022.

Many companies have voluntarily shut down their businesses in Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine, but Google has made it clear that it is not voluntarily suspending payments in the country. In March, Google said it had been forced to “pause” its billing system for consumers “due to a payment interruption”. (The top four credit card companies voluntarily withdrew from Russia in March due to the invasion of Ukraine, making it essentially impossible for Google to offer paid apps.) Now Google says blocking paid apps is “part of our compliance efforts.” requirements ’.

Advertisement The page states that “users cannot purchase applications and games, make subscription payments or make any purchases in the digital goods application via Google Play in Russia.” Free apps will continue to be available, and paid apps you have already purchased will continue to be available for download and use, but all purchases will now display an error message. Subscriptions will not be renewable and will be canceled. As Google only deals with the lack of credit card processing, he says that the payments of developers to Russian developers will continue.

Google has a blog post summarizing its efforts to help Ukraine, but continuing to do business in Russia makes it an extraordinary place in high technology. Microsoft, Apple, Intel and nearly 1,000 other companies have left Russia, while Google has been accused of being “Putin’s most relevant technical censor in the United States” in a recent Forbes article. One of the reasons Google can keep up with Russia is that the country has one of the most competitive search markets in the world. Google Search ranks second in Russia, just behind Russia’s largest technology company, Yandex. If Google leaves or is expelled from the country, it risks losing the market altogether.