Dmytro Sholomko, who headed Google's office in Ukraine for 17 years (and resigned in October of last year), gave an interview to DOU publication and, among other things, touched on the topic of Ukrainian localization of the company's services.
Google search engine, as well as YouTube, have long been criticized for imposing Russian content on Ukrainians. Although Sholomko notes that unlike foreign companies that launched offices in Moscow and managed Ukrainian business from there, Google focused on maximum localization.
"They said, each country is unique, let's study what is happening there. Therefore, Google's home page was standardly displayed in Ukrainian, although searches were mainly conducted in Russian," Dmitry says.
He adds that it was crucial for Google to localize projects for Ukraine. In the past, several projects had to be postponed because no one wanted to localize them in Ukrainian (eventually, the final cost of localization was higher than the economic benefit).
"My team wanted all Google products available worldwide to work in Ukraine in Ukrainian,"
Sholomko says that in Google, each team regulates the launch of its project and decides for itself what needs to be done – some immediately agreed to launch in Ukrainian, while others required lengthy negotiations.
In addition, the launch of the Ukrainian version required significant investments - as an example, Dmitry mentions the Google Street View service. To launch the localized version, it was necessary to import cars with special equipment, certify it, obtain the necessary permissions, and find a team that could shoot, process, transmit data, and put it on the service.
"Sometimes I read comments that I helped russify Ukraine, this is not true. If I hadn't stood as a barrier, many services for Ukraine would have been launched in Russian. In fact, we pushed for Ukrainian interface on several Google products. Some thought 'they will understand anyway'", Dmitry says.
He adds that he constantly had to explain how important Ukrainian localization is - geopolitically, strategically, and reputationally. At the same time, Sholomko notes that in recent years it has become easier - since more people started using the Ukrainian language.
"I can't say the ratio in Google regarding whether Russian or Ukrainian is used more now, but definitely there is much more Ukrainian. By tens of times,"
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