Page 13 - bne_Tech_05_2019

Leaders
May 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 13
Adopted in 2016, a new Russian legislation (dubbed ‘Yarovaya law’ or ‘Big Brother law’) requires messenger apps and other “organizers of information distribution” to add additional coding to transmitted electronic messages so that the Federal Security Service (FSB) can decipher them.
Telegram agreed to register its service in Russia, but refused to cooperate with the secret service under “laws incompatible with Telegram’s privacy policy.” As a consequence, a Moscow court ruled to block access to Telegram in a trial, which the messenger’s founder and CEO Pavel Durov called “an open farce.”
The authorities’ failed attempts to block access to the service in Russia caused substantial damages to a number of online services, which saw their IP
Russia’s Sberbank reportedly eyes media major Rambler, registers Sber trademark
Russia’s largest bank and digital economy powerhouse Sberbank plans to buy a stake in major internet media group Rambler controlled by Alexander Mamut, Vedomosti daily and RBC business portal reported on April 22 citing unnamed sources close to the deal.
Reportedly the two sides are negotiating an acquisition of non-controlling stake in Rambler, in order to enrich the ecosystem of Sberbank with digital media and entertainment services, which was confirmed by the companies that declined to comment further.
Previously in 2018 reports suggested that Sberbank is staging a hostile takeover of
address blocked even though they had no relation to Telegram.
According to Pavel Chikov of human rights watchdog Agora, Telegram’s resistance was helped by international cloud service providers such as Amazon and Digital Ocean, which refused to block the service as requested by the Russian authorities. Meanwhile, the Telegram app could still be downloaded from Apple’s app store.
In early 2019, Pavel Durov shut down the legal entity Telegram Messenger LLP, which was on the official Russian ban list, in an attempt to lift the ban. However, Roskomnadzor Head Alexander Zharov stated that such formal changes would “not change anything.”
Russian internet major Yandex, with which it already operates a large joint venture Yandex. Market marketplace. But as the founders and shareholders of Russia’s most valuable digital company made changes to shareholder structure, no deal followed.
Now Sberbank could be considering Rambler as its main internet platform, analysts surveyed by Vedomosti suggest. The bank is developing an integrated ecosystem of digital services. The CEO German Gref in 2018 said that Sberbank could in the future drop the "bank" from the name while transforming itself into the Sber ecosystem that covers all basic need of both the corporate and private clients.