Dmytro Sholomko, who headed Google’s representative office in Ukraine for 17 years (and resigned last October), gave an interview to the DOU publication and, among other things, touched upon the topic of Ukrainian localization of the company’s services.
Google, like YouTube, has long been criticized for imposing Russian content on Ukrainians. However, Sholomko notes that unlike foreign companies that set up offices in Moscow and managed their Ukrainian business from there, Google focused on maximizing localization.
«They say that each country is unique, so let’s study what’s going on there. That’s why Google’s homepage was displayed in Ukrainian as standard, although searches on it were mostly conducted in Russian», — says Dmytro.
He adds that it was a matter of principle for Google to localize projects for Ukraine. In the past, several projects had to be postponed because no one wanted to localize them into Ukrainian (after all, the final cost of localization was higher than the economic benefit).
«My team wanted all Google products available in the world to work in Ukrainian in Ukraine».
Sholomko says that at Google, each team regulates its own project launches and decides what is necessary and what is not — some immediately agreed to launch in Ukrainian, while others had to negotiate long and hard.
In addition, launching the Ukrainian version required a lot of investment — Dmytro cites Google Street View as an example. To launch a localized version, it was necessary to import cars with special equipment and certify it, obtain the necessary permits, and find a team that could capture, process, transfer data, and upload it to the service.
«Sometimes I read comments that I helped to Russify Ukraine, but this is not true. If I had not been a barrier, many services for Ukraine would have been launched in Russian. We actually knocked out the Ukrainian interface of several Google products. Some people thought that «would be equal to» anyway,” says Dmitry.
He adds that he constantly had to explain how important Ukrainian localization is geopolitically, strategically, and reputationally. At the same time, Sholomko notes that it has become easier in recent years, as more people have begun to use the Ukrainian language.
«I can’t say whether Russian or Ukrainian is used more on Google now, but there is definitely a lot more Ukrainian. Ten times».