Google employees criticise company's management over Navalny app removal

Google reportedly made the decision after local authorities threatened to imprison the company's employees in Moscow

Google employees have criticised their company for removing the voting app associated with Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, alleging that the move shows the company has capitulated to Kremlin's pressure.

As reported by Bloomberg, Google workers complained about the decision in internal forums and on memegen, a messaging board that has been used for previous employee protests at company.

Employees posted images on internal forums, mocking Google's policies on such issues.

One image showed a person reading a magazine below the slogan, 'Putin the user first'. Another image made fun of Google's slogan of making information 'universally accessible and useful'.

Citing a person with knowledge of the matter, Bloomberg said that Google made the decision to remove the app from its online store in Russia after local authorities threatened to imprison the company's employees in Moscow.

"I suspect that standing up to governments is just not top of the list of their priorities," William Echikson, head of Google's free expression policy in Europe from 2008 to 2015, told the publication.

He added that Google's executives were "pretty good at standing up to this stuff in the past," but "there's not the same idealism at the company any more".

"The company has changed. It's run by pragmatists now."

While Apple and Google's decision to remove the protest-voting app from their Russian stores pleased Russian authorities, it immediately drew criticism from opposition activists in Russia and human rights advocates in the US.

Leonid Volkov, a top aide to Alexey Navalny, wrote on Telegram that American tech firms "have caved into the Kremlin's blackmail".

Navalny's supporters described the decision as "a shameful act of political censorship".

Earlier, Russian authorities accused American companies of meddling in the country's election process by allowing apps from opposition parties, despite a ban on such apps by a Russian court.

The regulators also warned that Apple and Google could face new fines if they refuse to remove the banned apps from their app stores.

The app eventually disappeared from both companies' stores in Russia as voting in the parliamentary elections began on Friday.

Experts see Kremlin's crackdown on American firms as part of an ongoing effort to restrict access to information in the country.

In May, a Russian court fined Google 9.5 million roubles (£91,000) for failing to delete content that Russian authorities alleged encouraged minors to join unsanctioned demonstrations in the country.

Microblogging site Twitter was also fined for failing to remove such content from its platform.

Russia's telecom regulator Roskomnadzor slowed down the speed of Twitter in March over its repeated failure to remove banned content. The regulator alleged that it had more than 28,000 demands to the social media company, requesting it to delete illegal content, but no action was action by the firm.

In April, Apple was also fined $12 million for allegedly holding a monopoly position on the app market. The company has challenged that decision in court.