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Comment by notjackma | Hacker News Reader

Why discriminate against a Russian company over something that may or may not happen?

Russia has elections and they have laws which affect businesses based there - pretty much like every other country out there.

As the article states, Google is moving its engineers but the sales team is staying, so this reorganization is less to do with politics and more to do with Google centralizing its engineers in Zurich - just like MountainView.

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Russia has neither free speech nor free elections.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-25299116 http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/nov/30/russia.politics

China has none of the above and is now the world's largest economy. Doesn't seem to be an impediment to doing business, does it?

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/its-official-america-is-now...

The US is the world's largest economy, roughly 70% larger than China in fact.

That's a bogus article, that is more link-bait than substance - which is why nobody has taken it seriously. The author is patting their self on the back for forecasting an event they then self-proclaim to have taken place.

"So a Starbucks venti Frappucino served in Beijing counts the same as a venti Frappucino served in Minneapolis, regardless of what happens to be going on among foreign-exchange traders."

If a person in China making 10% of my income can buy as many Starbucks coffees as I can, that does not mean we have the same economic power or scale. I can buy a BMW, and they cannot, and that tells you the real story.

Not really. The real story is that the GDP per capita of the more deregulated Chinese provinces doubled or tripled from 2000 to 2010.

My Chinese friends tell me that there are tons of BMWs driving around. Looking at the numbers, it seems that BMW's volume of sales in now greater in China than in the U.S.

The US is the world's largest economy, roughly 70% larger than China in fact.

I saw an article recently that would contradict your assertion:

http://uk.businessinsider.com/china-overtakes-us-as-worlds-l...

>China has none of the above and is now the world's largest economy. Doesn't seem to be an impediment to doing business, does it?

sounds like you've never did business in countries like China or Russia, or did business at all.

Western companies have no problen doing business with China or Russia.

If you have a problem then that's on you. The politics in China has not stopped entrepeneurs from heading east.

For that matter, I doubt any country has free speech or free elections. Some countries only are better in making citizens believe in opposite than others.

> Russia has elections and they have laws which affect businesses based there - pretty much like every other country out there

In the U.S. I can sign a contract with a private party–or even with the government–and reasonably expect (a) that the terms will be complied with or (b) if they are not, to have reasonable options for compelling performance or collecting damages. In Somalia, on the other hand, a contract is merely a discussion aid. Forcing performance or collecting damages requires deploying force.

Russia is in between. The courts are venal and capricious. This means that a contract saying one thing can be interpreted differently because of the counterparty's political connections. (Not saying that doesn't happen everywhere, but its degree and brazenness is greater in states without a firm rule of law, like Russia.) It also means that any disagreement could escalate unpredictably to one's property being sacked and self being jailed.

None of this makes Russia an impossible place to do business. But it does make it more costly, in the form of ambiguous risks and the unique and uncertain costs of mitigating them.

Don't they say the same thing about China and it's rule of law, or lack of? Yet Western businesses flock there.

If I were an investor and an entrepreneur gave me all these reasons for not entering the Russian or Chinese market, as well as refusing to do business with companies from these countries, I would quickly show them the door.

China has improved governance fairly rapidly. Sadly, I think it's clear Russia have regressed badly.

A good example of the Chinese situation is AMSC: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-02-19/china-supreme-court...

Now, the situation shouldn't have arisen, but as the CEO has observed people thought merely trying to get the Chinese court system to go along with them was nuts. In Russia this would be game over already.

China's economy is big, growing, and rapidly diversifying across industries and into consumption. Russia's is treading water, concentrated, and shrinking away from consumption.

China also has more pro-business and -investment infrastructure than Russia, e.g. well-defended special economic zones, empowered pro-development governance, etc. Bejing has been more stable and predictable in respect of these priorities than Moscow.

Google left china way before they left Russia. Plenty of western companies have trouble working in China, especially since the market has closed up a bit since the Olympics.

After Google left China, their stock went up over time, still much larger than Baidu whose protected market is limited to the mainland.

And why choose Zurich over Moscow as the place to center its engineers? Maybe because the business climate is not as conducive and that's very much because of the political situation in Russia.

It's also easier to recruit people to work in Zurich than in Moscow.

Zurich = Central location in Europe, natives speak multiple languages, science and R&D already there (pharmaceutical).

Also, Switzerland being in the Schengen area means they can recruit from any other Schengen country -- more-or-less the EU minus Britain and Ireland, plus Iceland, Switzerland and Norway -- without needing to get work visas or any other right-to-work documentation.

Schengen is about border controls for transportation, it doesn't mean a permit to work in itself automatically. Rather, it's because Switzerland is a member of EFTA. The UK isn't one of the Schengen countries, for example, but they can still work in Switzerland.

I guess I'm mistaken then. I thought freedom of movement, including for work, was covered under the Schengen agreement's visa policies.

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