Cuba and other countries - google-cloud-platform

I got a project running on Google Cloud Platform but is not accesible from Cuba. I know that there are some restrictions but since this is a non-profit project and also a non-profit organization I wonder if there is a chance to open our site to the entire world?
The organization is CONABIO (Commission for Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity of Mexico).


Unfortunately GCP/Google and most cloud providers that are based in the United States have to follow federal rules that limit services to countries with embargoes. They won't be able to remove the restriction for you, you'll likely need to find another host based outside of the United States.
Google restricts access to some of its business services in certain countries or regions, such as Crimea, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria.
...
Certain Google services might be available in these countries or regions for personal use, but not for business or education use.


As mentioned by FridayPush, Google restricts access to some of its business service in certain countries or regions, such as Crimea, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria. Google does apply this restriction as it follows US trade regulations and thus relaxing any embargo is not dependent on Google itself. You can check at this link.
These are the same countries restricted by the GCP. Here is a list of countries affected by the US trade regulations. The sanctions are different from country to country.

Related

Firebase migration for China [duplicate]

I am now developing a social application. But recently I noticed that Firebase is blocked in China. So I want to make sure whether firebase can be used in China?

* EDIT 24 January 2020 *
Some of the information here might be out of date.
Firebase has a China service at https://firebase.google.cn/ which is not blocked in the PRC. (Thanks to #c-an for bringing this up.)
That said, *.google.com and *.googleapis.com are still blocked in China. I'll change/update this as I get more information.
Original Answer
For now Firebase is blocked and can't be used in China, along with other Google services, because the PRC has blocked all URIs with *.google.com and *.googleapis.com.
This also means, for example, that the Play app store can't be accessed from China. If you don't know what's going on between Google and the PRC, here's a primer.
Also, according to Chinese law, user data of Chinese citizens must be stored inside of the PRC. You might be able to get away with only addressing this once you have a significant number of users, but the trend has been for the CCP to crack down more and more on foreign information, even busting VPNs and declaring them illegal despite complaints of academics who say that they need, you know, real information.
As we're now in the run-up to the 19th Party Congress this autumn, we can expect the situation to get worse before it gets better. Maybe 2018 will leave room for relaxation?
For now, very sadly, forget anything Google in China, and be prepared to store user data of PRC citizens on servers located inside the Great Firewall. Also be prepared for seemingly random degradations of your service within China, or to be blocked altogether, along with these other blocked services.
Update 2017-11-23: The 19th Party Congress has come and gone and, if anything, Google services look less likely than ever to become available in China. The great firewall is likely to continue to be strengthened as the Chinese Communist Party extends its role into corporations, and foreign firms are generally disadvantaged.
Update 2018-08-05: Google plans to open a censored version of its search in China, according to leaked documents. It seems reasonable to assume that if a censored Google Search becomes available in the PRC, then Firebase and other Google Cloud products may as well. The censored search plan, code-named Dragonfly, has reportedly been in the works since December 2017, possibly a result of meetings that month between Google CEO Sundar Pichai and an unnamed top Chinese official when they met at the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, China, where PRC General Secretary and President Xi Jinping gave a speech.
Update 2018-12-23: It appears that Google's Project Dragonfly is now on hold if not outright abandoned. This implies that the outlook for Firebase in China has worsened.

You can build your own Rest API server outside of China, and make the server talks to Firebase rest api endpoints of Realtime db or Authentication, https://firebase.google.com/docs/reference/rest/database. So you web app talks to your rest api server (accessible from China), and your rest api server talks to Firebase.

The answer is NO :
Using a huge part of Firebase services, I contacted the support, this is the answer :
I'm glad you are considering Firebase for your project. However, in
accordance with current U.S. policies, it is not possible to use
Firebase from within certain countries. For more information about
these restrictions, please refer to the U.S. Department of the
Treasury website. The current list is of blocked countries is listed
here. If you have end-users located within China, it's quite difficult
to access Firebase there since the use of Firebase requires Google
Play Services, which most of the devices in China don't have. We
understand that access to our products has been problematic from
within mainland China. We believe it may have been caused by
networking conditions in China, rather than Google's own services.
Since access to services is determined by the respective country's
government and they don't report to Google, the Transparency Report is
the most authoritative it can be.

I just tested and I am able to access my realtime database hosted on the Singapore region in China mainland. No need to modify anything. Whatever works overseas, works in China. Tested in Beijing.

Facing the same problem, if you are in china, install Astrill VPN and change from openweb to StealthVPN, connect to a server like USA for china one and login to firebase. It will work successfully.

Google Datastore vs CloudSQL

I am working on standing up a mobile app with Google Datastore as backend database. I am debating whether google datastore is right choice for below use cases vs other datastorage options google offers. We are a small team and we don't want to incur lot of operations costs in the initial run. Application will have the following use cases:
User registration and profile which will take user personal identification details like credit cards, bank account , emails,address etc
Various subscription plans like yearly subscription price, monthly subscription price and pay per single service . User will be charged with bank account or credit card set on user profile
Mobile app will be launched within next 2 months and i am expecting at-least 1000 users in first few months
Appreciate your feedback at this stage where we are laying down the foundation of the app
Thank you

Datastore is good to manage user profiles and the use cases that you're referring as well it has free quota amounts and low costs regarding its usage and it'll be a better option compared with Cloud SQL which price and storage capacity is limited to the machine type that you're using. Additionally, as this isn't a technical inquiry, but a solution concern, I suggest posting this on the Datastore Google Groups where ideas regarding the Datastore and other products would be properly exchanged.

Azure Mobile Service is slow in the United States

My app uses the South East Asian Microsoft Azure server and I think that might be the problem why people in the United States face issues regarding the app's efficiency. How do I get around this in Microsoft Azure? Do I need to purchase mirror servers, etc? I am very illiterate when it comes to server/hardware related stuff.
The SQL Database is also hosted in the South East Asian region
The Mobile backend is in the same region
The Blob Storage is in the same region
Could this be the reason why people in the other end of the world face 'slowing' issues?
Can someone point out how I can make sure that my app service is available worldwide instead of limiting it to a specific region?

In-App Purchase in Google Glass

Are in-app purchases allowed in Google Glass? I've got some code I'm ready to try out with my existing android merchant account, but I don't want to get it banned or something. Is this permitted?

It appears this is NOT permitted (at least in most cases). In Section F. Fees of the Glass Platform Developer Policies it says:
You may not charge end users any fees or collect any payments
in order to download or access your Glassware, or in
connection with virtual goods or functionality of your Glassware.
One has to assume this extends to in-app purchases since these are most likely 'virtual goods'. If you were Amazon.com selling physical products via Google Glass it might be interpreted differently.

Where to get/extract relational data on administrative regions of the world?

I'm working on a web-application that operates on services. Every service is normally provided over some (possibly several distinct) geographical domain(s) like city, county, region, state, country or worldwide.
Typical tasks:
users will submit their location as lng,lat and I will need to find what are the services available for them
when users add new service they should be able to select the smallest geographical domain that covers service area, eg: US->California->SFBayArea.
I wonder what is the best db schema to represent hierarchical relations of geo domains and where to get the actual data for geographical domains?
I started with openstreetmap though it looks rather complex and it will take considerable time. So I decided to appeal for community wisdom :)
Thank you for sharing your wisdom!
Have a nice day!
--UPDATES: updated typical tasks

For all sorts of geography-related data (though not maps), try http://www.geonames.org/.