China banned WhatsApp. This isn't a big deal (Russia has their own Facebook-esq service; its the most popular site in Russia) [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VK_(social_networking)

LinkedIn and Facebook aren't getting banned. They have the option of complying with local operating requirements (Store data about Russian residents in Russia), or not operating.

This is not a particularly draconian, onerous, or unreasonable requirement. (And is no different from that of the EU, sans safe harbour.) Other tech companies have been able to meet it.

> Companies ranging from Alphabet Inc.’s Google to Alibaba Group Holding Ltd complied

How did Google comply? There are no datacenters in Russia and it shut down the only engineering office there.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/12/google-closes-...

It's always possible to store your data in the Russian equivalent of AWS. (Even if your web application and its secret sauce is running out of your own data center.)

I know how Google infrastructure worked up to a couple of years ago, including user-specific storage. What you describe would be a very large undertaking across a large number of projects. Due to legal restrictions, Maps has something ad-hoc just for South Korean tiles, which is a much simpler problem. Not only it's extremely clumsy, it also adds a lot of limitations:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31568460/google-maps-sty...

https://www.theverge.com/tech/2013/10/13/4835026/why-google-...

In the EU, even without the Safe Harbor, personal data was allowed to be transferred with a series of other agreements -- including explicit consent. That means that a user who didn't want their information kept in the EU, could arrange to have it stored elsewhere.

Do you know if this possibility is available in the Russian situation?