{"id":41079,"date":"2020-07-09T10:29:52","date_gmt":"2020-07-09T10:29:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/?guid=7bc78c5edce2c83e6699f028152d2195"},"modified":"2020-07-09T10:29:52","modified_gmt":"2020-07-09T10:29:52","slug":"google-abandons-controversial-cloud-project-in-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/google-abandons-controversial-cloud-project-in-china\/","title":{"rendered":"Google abandons controversial cloud project in China"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n Sabina Weston<\/a><\/span>
\n <\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n
9 Jul, 2020<\/span><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

\u200b<\/span>Google<\/a> has decided to abandon the development of a controversial cloud<\/a> computing project named \u201cIsolated Region\u201d, which catered to various governments\u2019 desires to control data within their borders.<\/p>\n

The tech giant scrapped the initiative in May, partly due to the coronavirus<\/a> pandemic but also due to the rising geopolitical tensions between the US and China<\/a>, where Isolated Regions was being developed, according to two anonymous Google employees\u00a0speaking to\u00a0Bloomberg<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

The project, which was launched in early 2018, sought to comply with Chinese regulations which require Western companies to form a joint venture with a Chinese partner company when they provide data or networking services. However, the development was paused in January 2019, reportedly due to Google choosing to focus on potential customers in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.<\/p>\n

However, according to one source, the geopolitical issues placed demands on Isolated Region that Google was not capable of delivering.<\/p>\n

A Google spokeswoman refuted the claims made by the employees, telling Bloomberg<\/em> that Isolated Region wasn\u2019t shut down for either of the given reasons and that the company \u201cdoes not offer and has not offered cloud platform services inside China\u201d.<\/p>\n

Google has\u00a0said that the cloud initiative was cancelled because \u201cother approaches we were actively pursuing offered better outcomes\u201d, although it has yet to elaborate on the specifics of these approaches.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a comprehensive approach to addressing these requirements that covers the governance of data, operational practices and survivability of software,\u201d the spokeswoman said. \u201cIsolated Region was just one of the paths we explored to address these requirements.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we learned from customer conversations and input from government stakeholders in Europe and elsewhere is that other approaches we were actively pursuing offered better outcomes.”<\/p>\n

The news comes just days after Google, alongside Microsoft, Facebook and Twitter, made the decision to suspend the processing of user data requests from the Hong Kong government<\/a>, following the implementation of a new security law that criminalises protests. The Hong Kong government reportedly requested data from Google users 105 times in 2019 alone. <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sabina Weston<\/p>\n

9 Jul, 2020 <\/p>\n

\u200bGoogle has decided to abandon the development of a controversial cloud computing project named \u201cIsolated Region\u201d, which catered to various governments\u2019 desires to control data within their bord…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":627,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41079","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41079","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/627"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41079"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41079\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41080,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41079\/revisions\/41080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/icloud.pe\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}