Russia’s lower parliament has just passed a bill that requires all foreign Internet companies to store Russian personal data within Russia. The law was originally to be put into place on January 1, 2016, but the bill got moved up to January 1, 2015
It will be hard for he biggest internet companies to move their servers over to Russia in this shortened time frame and they risk losing tens of millions of users because of this. These internet companies make their revenue through the amount of people that see the ads on their site and with the lost of some of its users could effect their revenues. The recent acceleration of this bill has had a negative effect on some of the biggest Internet companies in the stock market with Facebook down 1.67%, Google down 2.20%, and Twitter down 2.85%. The bill still has to be approved by the upper chamber of parliament and the Kremlin before it can be put into place. The bill however is likely to pass the last steps and will most likely be put into place in the coming weeks.
Sonne, Paul, and Olga Razumovskaya. “Russia Steps Up New Internet Law.” Wall Street Journal 25 Sept.
2014: n. pag. Web.