[ardemchenkov]

It's actually a small but very important victory of Facebook, Google and Twitter. Initially they refused to follow this new law. Then Russia decided not only to postpone the law for it until January 2016 at least but also build this special data center. And since there are no official comments about it from Facebook, Google and Twitter, they are still fighting. This fight is very important not only for them but for small companies, which will be the main victims of this law in the future.

[alexro]

> main victims of this law in the future

they've got access to the market and they need to pay for it this way or another.

still better than the Chinese way of banning them altogether.

[ardemchenkov]

Still better than in China but worser than before.

Normally if you get an access to the market, to be really successful and legal there, you will open a local office, pay taxes, bring your own money and 3rd party investments, create jobs and so on.

In Russia it will work like this: "Our forthcoming policy brief on the new Russian amendment estimates the losses from this amendment to -0.27% of GDP, equivalent to a loss of 286 billion roubles (US$ 5.7 billion). Russia’s economy is already in severe recession, and the Russian economy is likely to contract by 2-3% this year. Investments in the Russian economy would drop by -1.4% or 187 billion roubles, with considerable effects on employment. The manufacturing sectors are hardest hit, as they must also absorb cost increases from their suppliers in the service industry."[1]

Also when I mentioned "small companies", it was not only about foreign companies, but about Russian companies as well. Many of them use foreign hosting providers and cloud services because the quality is higher.

Imagine that every county in the World will require the same thing. For monsters like Google and Facebook it will be an issue but still solvable issue. For small and middle size business it will cost a lot.

And if we take a look from the Russian Government point of view, if you have a choice to check that Google follows the law or to check that 100 small companies follow the same law. Of course, they will check 100 companies, because it's easier to find something there than losing a lot of money, time and other resources fighting against Google.

[1] - http://www.ecipe.org/blog/data-localisation-russia/

[tempestn]

> small companies, which will be the main victims of this law in the future

Small companies, and the people of Russia.