Google forced to end Play Store app sales in Russia

A new support page—first spotted by 9to5Google—says, "Google Play is blocking the downloading of paid apps and updates to paid apps in Russia starting May 5, 2022."Many companies have voluntarily stopped their business in Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine, but Google makes it clear it's not voluntarily ending payments in the country. In March, Google said it was forced to "pause" its billing system for users "due to payment system disruption." (The big four credit card companies voluntarily pulled out of Russia in March over the Ukraine invasion, making it basically impossible for Google to offer paid apps.) Now Google says the blocking of paid apps is "part of our compliance efforts."Google has a blog post recapping its efforts to help Ukraine, but continuing to do business in Russia makes it an outlier in big tech.