"The videos will just take longer to load and the quality will be worse."

YouTube is slowing down in Russia. The reason is that the number of Google Global Cache servers is being reduced, thanks to which videos on the YouTube platform are loaded quickly and in good quality.

How tells The Bell, in March 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine, Google paused its entire advertising business in the country and began moving out employees. And in May, he decided to completely curtail his business in the Russian Federation and bankrupt the Russian legal entity. After which the providers Radiosvyaz and MIPT-Telecom received letters informing them of the disconnection from GGC. The first received a message from the Irish subsidiary of Google – in connection with “changes in legal practice”: company employees will contact the operator to remove the equipment from operation. The second was shut down in March – after MIPT itself ended up on the sanctions list.

Large operators continue to use the remaining GGC servers, but their number in Russia will be reduced from 700 to approximately 450 by the end of 2023. The problem is that even the servers that remain in service also begin to wear out and fail. But it is impossible to repair them or replace them with new ones, experts say, due to sanctions and Google’s problems in Russia. The import of hardware into the country, including servers and components, is limited. It will not work to simply replace the failed part. If, for example, a hard drive in a node fails, then it is not possible to replace it with another one, since GGC will not accept the replacement.

The problem is aggravated by the fact that the bankrupt Google LLC, the Russian “daughter” of the tech giant, owes creditors led by the Federal Tax Service almost 54 billion rubles. And the court stubbornly continues to fine the company for failing to remove videos with “fake” information about the army—similar fines have already accumulated to the tune of 135 million rubles.

However, in general, experts reassure, the problem with GGC does not yet threaten Russian users with a complete stop of YouTube in the Russian Federation. The videos will just take longer to load and the quality will be worse. But already today, users in Russia are faced with problems: complaints that YouTube works intermittently or does not load content.

Although experts do not yet risk linking these problems with sanctions. They say, in particular, that the traffic of YouTube and other Google services in Russia is growing all the time.

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