Will Russia's New Data Protection Law Impact SEOs and SMBs Outside of Russia?

[ecommercebc]

We've all seen the news recently that Google will be closing its engineering offices in Russia due to new data protection laws coming into place in January 2015. The same law has also led to Adobe pulling out of Russia earlier in the year.

I was wondering how you think this will impact SEOers and small/medium businesses that market _to _Russia, but are based outside of the country? Personal data has been defined in the new legislation as:

• Personal data means any information directly or indirectly related to any identified or potentially identifiable person. It includes, among other things, first name and family name, date and place of birth, address, information about family status, education, profession, income

Source

For those businesses which don't process personal data (affiliates etc), will there be any foreseeable impact?

On the flipside, are there any benefits here for affiliate businesses inside of Russia? I'm using affiliates as an example to get the ball rolling, but I'm sure there's numerous more. Personally, I'd be interested to hear if you think this may impact corporate websites which don't process personal data, but operate outside of Russia.

[BlueprintMarketing]

this is going to be a really bad thing for businesses as well as individuals in Russia.

Yes I'm sure you could exploit the system for a short period however I believe the idea of the system is to close off Russia from the rest of the world there is very high chance of Vladimir Putin allowing businesses that benefit himself and his friends to use the Internet but aside from that my opinion is in 10 years from now Russia will have its own web and it will not be a pretty picture for those outside of Russia or those inside.

In fact I don't mean to go on but I've read quite a bit about this and I think that it is one of the most unfortunate things that will happen to the population in my lifetime. Putin is trying to get American European whoever to build data centers to spy on his own people I think what is going to occur and this is only based on my opinion is what it would be like to have North Korea if it had data centers and the Internet.

I know Vladimir Putin called Yadex a American spy tool I don't think that he is getting any comfort from the information he's obtained from Edward Snowden.

I believe it will have a enormous impact on Russia the Ukraine and even parts of Europe.  I am a German and the sanctions are not enough Putin was a KGB guy I don't think he is going to lead Russia into enlightenment unfortunately I feel that he will use technology to spy on his own people in order to Keep tabs on what he may consider any threats  to his interest for him keeping power in Russia.

I look at this is one of the most bleak things in the world and it is truly sad. Yes I believe there will be an open market for black hat tactics doing whatever you want pretty much I don't recommend getting involved in it however the choices yours.

I'm really glad that you brought this up is something that easily spoken about more often.

Sincerely,

Thomas

[ecommercebc]

That's really interesting - I hadn't thought of the impact to the Ukraine, but that definitely makes sense.

I think as you've highlighted, Google and Europe more generally is a tricky issue at the moment, what with the recent issues in Spain and the not-very-helpful suggestion that Google should 'break up'. In the UK, the chancellor has just announced a 'Google Tax' which will no doubt go down as well as the legislative changes in Spain.

This article has a kind of doomsday scenario where Google pulls out of Europe, but I can't really foresee that happening. What do you reckon? It does worry me the way Google and Europe are colliding so much at the moment.