Ministry of Communications is preparing a list of "strategic Internet companies"

The Russian government has repeatedly made it clear that it considers the Internet a strategic direction and is not going to allow large foreign players to search engines and social networks of Runet. Medvedev, Putin and some ministers talked about this. The new policy became apparent after the FAS blocked the purchase of the “Runner” by Google after consulting with the presidential administration.

And now, at the lower level of the power vertical, they decided that they should somehow formalize the “promise from above”. The Ministry of Communications and Mass Communications began to develop "safety criteria, on the basis of which companies will be included in the list of strategic ones." These companies will be under the protection of the state, and in no case will foreigners be allowed here and into adjacent areas.

According to available information, the specialists of the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media have encountered serious difficulties in choosing criteria. They can not understand by what parameters some web services can be considered strategic, while others cannot. Take as a criterion the audience of the site does not work: not every resource with a large audience is strategically important, says a source in the ministry.
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It is clear that Yandex, Mail.ru, Odnoklassniki and Vkontakte should be included in the list of “strategic” ones. But whether “Mambu”, Liveinternet.ru and some other sites should be included here - the officials cannot yet understand It is also unclear how government protectionism will affect free competition, which is crucial for the development of the Internet market.