Minister: Google's Removal of Apps from Play Store in India 'Cannot Be Permitted'https://english.aawsat.com/technology/4888046-minister-googles-removal-apps-play-store-india-cannot-be-permitted
Minister: Google's Removal of Apps from Play Store in India 'Cannot Be Permitted'
FILE PHOTO: India's Minister for Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw addresses the audience during the 'SemiconIndia 2023', India’s annual semiconductor conference, in Gandhinagar, India, July 28, 2023. REUTERS/Amit Dave/File Photo
Minister: Google's Removal of Apps from Play Store in India 'Cannot Be Permitted'
FILE PHOTO: India's Minister for Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw addresses the audience during the 'SemiconIndia 2023', India’s annual semiconductor conference, in Gandhinagar, India, July 28, 2023. REUTERS/Amit Dave/File Photo
Google's decision to remove some apps in India from its app store "cannot be permitted", Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Saturday, amid an ongoing dispute over service fee payments to the US firm.
Google on Friday removed from its Play Store many Indian apps, including Matrimony.com's popular Bharat Matrimony and job search app Naukri, saying the companies were not abiding by its in-app payment guidelines.
Vaishnaw said he has held talks with Google and will meet the startups, which needed protection in India.
"This cannot be permitted. This kind of de-listing cannot be permitted," he said in a statement.
Google declined to comment, according to Reuters.
The removal has sparked criticism from many startups who have for years protested and legally challenged many of the US giant's practices, including its in-app fee. Google says the fees help develop and promote the Android and Play Store ecosystem.
The dispute centers on efforts by some Indian startups to stop Google from imposing a fee of 11%-26% on in-app payments, after the country's antitrust authorities ordered it to not mandatorily enforce an earlier system of charging 15%-30%.
But Google effectively received the go-ahead to charge the fee or remove apps after two court decisions in January and February, one by the Supreme Court.
Google said on Friday that some Indian companies had chosen not to pay for the "immense value they receive on Google Play".
Among the worst hit by the removals is Matrimony.com which has seen more than 150 of its apps dropped from the Play Store.
"All our apps have been removed and we are out of Play Store and (that) means out of business," founder Murugavel Janakiraman told Reuters on Saturday. "If this continuous for a long term then we will have significant drop in revenue."
Info Edge, another affected company, had seen its job search app Naukri and another real estate search app, removed. Many of the company's app had been restored, its founder said on Saturday on X, without elaborating.
Google briefly removed popular Indian payments app Paytm from its Play Store in 2020 citing some policy violations. The move led to the company's founder and the wider startup industry joining together to challenge Google by launching their own app stores and filing legal cases.
Meta Taps Reliance for 1st AI-enabled Data Center in Indiahttps://english.aawsat.com/technology/5282339-meta-taps-reliance-1st-ai-enabled-data-center-india
The Meta logo is displayed on a mobile phone over a stock market graph displayed on a laptop screen in Liverpool, Britain, 09 June 2026. EPA/ADAM VAUGHAN
Meta Taps Reliance for 1st AI-enabled Data Center in India
The Meta logo is displayed on a mobile phone over a stock market graph displayed on a laptop screen in Liverpool, Britain, 09 June 2026. EPA/ADAM VAUGHAN
Facebook-parent Meta and Indian conglomerate Reliance Industries on Wednesday announced a deal to develop an AI-enabled data center in the state of Gujarat, as the US tech giant scales its digital footprint globally.
The project, to be built in Jamnagar district, comes as technology giants race to expand computing capacity needed to support generative AI services in the world's fastest-growing major economy.
Reliance will develop a 168-megawatt data center to be delivered within two years, while Meta will lease capacity from the facility, the companies said in a joint statement.
According to AFP, the financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.
Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg said it was "proud" to partner with Reliance on its "first AI-enabled data center in India.”
"This world-class facility in Jamnagar will help us scale our AI infrastructure globally while deepening our long-term investment in India's economy," Zuckerberg said.
Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani described the announcement as India's "first built-to-suit data center for a global technology leader of Meta's scale.”
India, home to more than a billion internet users, has seen a wave of investment announcements from global and domestic firms seeking to tap rising demand for cloud computing, artificial intelligence and data storage.
Google and Amazon have expanded their cloud infrastructure footprint in the country, while Indian conglomerates including Adani Group and Reliance have unveiled large-scale data center plans.
Last week, Australian data center operator AirTrunk said it would invest US$30 billion in India by 2030 to develop five gigawatts of data center capacity.
Reliance is India's biggest privately held conglomerate and its Jamnagar refinery is billed as the world's largest.
Jamnagar is also home to what Reliance says is "one of the world's largest wildlife rescue, care and conservation centers.”
IBM: Saudi AI Sovereignty No Longer Just About Data Locationhttps://english.aawsat.com/technology/5282335-ibm-saudi-ai-sovereignty-no-longer-just-about-data-location
IBM: Saudi AI Sovereignty No Longer Just About Data Location
Saudi digital sovereignty is no longer only about where data is stored, but about control over infrastructure, models and operations. Shutterstock
Digital sovereignty in Saudi Arabia is no longer just about where data is stored. It is now about who controls the infrastructure, models, operations, keys, and digital supply chains when conditions change.
That question dominated an IBM roundtable on digital sovereignty in the Kingdom, as Saudi Arabia accelerates the digital agenda of Vision 2030 and raises its ambitions in artificial intelligence, cloud infrastructure, operational resilience, and governance.
A gap between awareness and readiness
IBM says Saudi market findings show that 90% of Saudi executives believe AI sovereignty should be part of their business strategy in 2026. But the discussion pointed to a much lower level of actual readiness, with participants saying only “two to three out of every 10” clients in the Kingdom are adequately prepared.
Ayman AlRashed, IBM’s regional vice president in Saudi Arabia, said the debate is no longer theoretical or something to postpone. It is “a discussion happening today,” he said.
The gap, he said, is not about awareness. It is about the distance between believing sovereignty belongs in strategy and having the ability to execute it. Many organizations, he added, still approach sovereignty in traditional terms, asking “where is the data?” and “where is the computing?” even as the issue has become far wider.
Ayman AlRashed, IBM’s regional vice president in Saudi Arabia (IBM)
A Saudi study by the IBM Institute for Business Value found that 63% of Saudi leaders are concerned about reliance on specific regions for computing resources, above the global average. Another 85% believe geopolitical and economic issues threaten technology investments.
At the same time, 73% of Saudi leaders believe that geopolitical volatility could create new business opportunities in 2026 if organizations adapt.
Sovereignty is not just location
During the session, attended by Asharq Al-Awsat, Sabine Holl, IBM’s vice president of technical sales and chief technology officer for the Middle East and Africa, said sovereignty has moved from a regulatory demand to a strategic priority.
Holl said the debate began with data sovereignty, whether data was located inside or outside the country. But recent events, including data center outages and geopolitical tensions, have shown that location alone does not guarantee control.
Digital sovereignty, she said, is now tied to control over data, infrastructure and technology development.
IBM divides the concept into four pillars: operational sovereignty, data sovereignty, technology sovereignty and AI sovereignty. In that sense, sovereignty is no longer merely compliance with local data-residency rules. It is the continuing ability to know who can access systems, who manages the environment, where models run and how an organization can prove compliance when needed.
Holl put it plainly: Sovereignty is not just about location.
The question, she said, is not only whether data is stored in a local data center. It is who can control it, under which identity it can be decrypted and whether the organization has a recovery and operating plan if a regional outage or sudden crisis hits.
IBM says Saudi market findings show that 90% of Saudi executives believe AI sovereignty should be part of their business strategy in 2026. Shutterstock
AI complicates the equation
AI makes the issue harder. Models and agents do not simply store or read data. They can access multiple sources, interpret information, suggest decisions or take action inside an organization’s systems.
That changes the sovereignty question. Does an organization control only where its data sits, or does it also control what AI does with that data?
That explains IBM’s focus on what it calls a new operating model for AI. The company says organizations advancing in AI are not merely deploying more tools. They are redesigning how they work. IBM says the model rests on four connected systems: agents, data, automation and hybrid.
In this context, IBM announced the next generation of Watsonx Orchestrate to coordinate and manage AI agents across different environments, along with capabilities linked to real-time data through Confluent, watsonx.data, IBM Concert for intelligent operations and IBM Sovereign Core for operational sovereignty.
During the session, Asharq Al-Awsat asked whether sovereignty becomes harder when agents enter enterprise workflows, because data is no longer only stored, but also used, interpreted and acted upon.
Holl said organizations now face a reality in which agents are spreading “everywhere,” inside their own environments and on other platforms, making “supervision” and auditability essential. She said part of IBM’s operating model includes what she described as an “agent control layer” to manage and monitor those agents.
From cloud to operational sovereignty
IBM sees a hybrid cloud strategy as central to building sovereignty.
Holl said cloud changed how sovereignty is viewed, especially in the Middle East and Africa, where laws and requirements on data access and use emerged early. That helped shape IBM’s hybrid cloud strategy, she said, so that the benefits of cloud are not limited to public environments, but can also apply to private clouds and on-premises systems.
The “promise of cloud,” built on the idea that everything would move to the cloud, has not fully materialized, Holl said. Many organizations still operate across hybrid and multi-cloud environments without sufficient transparency or clear audit and control capabilities.
If an organization cannot answer “at the push of a button” where systems are running, who controls them and whether they comply with requirements, then it is not truly sovereign, she said.
IBM calls this “sovereignty by design.”
Holl said an existing environment cannot simply be patched later to become sovereign. She compared it to a small boat on a lake, saying it cannot simply be repaired into a ship capable of crossing an ocean and facing a storm.
In practice, that means sovereignty must be built into the architecture from the start, through portability, choice, open platforms, recovery plans and control over keys and identities.
IBM says human skills are the currency of the AI economy. Shutterstock
Turning sovereignty into operations
IBM says IBM Sovereign Core is designed to operationalize and verify digital sovereignty, rather than just a written policy.
The company describes it as a platform that helps governments, organizations and service providers build AI-ready sovereign environments, with the ability to prove control and compliance across hybrid settings.
Dinesh Nirmal, senior vice president, products, software at IBM, said AI has made sovereignty “a runtime requirement, not a policy statement.”
AlRashed said that as AI becomes part of institutional and national strategies, organizations need to innovate “without compromising operational authority, trust or regulatory requirements.”
The platform includes a customer-managed control layer, identity services, encryption, data within sovereign boundaries, continuous compliance monitoring, automated audit evidence, prebuilt regulatory frameworks and controlled deployment of AI models, inference and agents within defined sovereign limits.
It also relies on open technologies, including Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat AI, and supports a partner ecosystem that includes AMD, Dell, Mistral, MongoDB and Palo Alto Networks.
Holl said the point is not that every organization must build a local server or chip. It is that organizations must be able to choose and move between components and environments when conditions change.
Shortages of graphics processing units, memory and chips could become a sovereignty risk, she said, if an organization is locked into one supplier or an architecture it cannot replace.
Resilience is part of sovereignty
A key theme in the discussion was that sovereignty cannot be separated from operational resilience. An organization that cannot recover from an outage, cyberattack or geopolitical crisis does not, in practice, have the control it believes it has.
Holl said some backup and disaster recovery strategies failed because they were not seriously tested or treated as an operational necessity rather than a useful option.
In Saudi Arabia, the issue is gaining weight as digital transformation expands across sensitive sectors, including government, energy, finance, telecommunications and health care.
Participants said some entities, especially government bodies, are no longer just waiting for policies to be completed. They are moving practically to shift workloads to sovereign providers, or to ensure that those managing environments are located inside the Kingdom.
Sovereignty and human skills
The discussion was not limited to technology. AlRashed linked digital sovereignty to people, saying AI cannot deliver value without skills and trust in systems.
“Human skills are the currency of the AI economy,” he said. Some organizations, he added, deploy AI but fail to achieve the expected value because users lack the confidence or ability to benefit from it.
That adds another layer to the Saudi debate. Sovereignty is not only about who owns the data center or cloud platform. It is also about who operates it, who understands the risks, who can prove compliance and who can change course when rules, markets or threats shift.
In IBM’s 2026 trends report, 88% of Saudi executives said agentic AI helps them make better, faster decisions during disruption.
But that optimism creates a parallel challenge. The more agents can support decisions or carry out tasks, the greater the need for clear governance, auditing, lifecycle management for models and agents and the ability to stop or adjust what is not working as required.
A Saudi model taking shape
Saudi Arabia appears to occupy a distinct place in this debate. Holl described it as an example of a market building local data centers and working with global cloud providers to bring technology into the country, allowing innovation within local regulatory frameworks.
At the same time, the figures show that concern about external dependence on computing, chips and global providers is greater than the global average.
The debate, then, is not about choosing between full isolation and full openness. It is about building a model that balances access to global innovation with local control, the ability to prove compliance and the operation of AI within clear boundaries.
In this context, digital sovereignty becomes part of the operating architecture of the digital economy, not just a legal clause or regulatory requirement.
As AI moves from pilots to operations, and from models to agents, the question raised by the session becomes more urgent for Saudi organizations: Do they merely have data inside their borders, or do they have full control over what happens to that data, who uses it, how models and agents operate on it and what happens when conditions change?
Saudi Arabia, Türkiye Discusses Boosting Technology and AI Partnershiphttps://english.aawsat.com/technology/5282323-saudi-arabia-t%C3%BCrkiye-discusses-boosting-technology-and-ai-partnership
Saudi Minister of Communications and Information Technology Abdullah Alswaha and Turkish Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Abdulkadir Uraloglu meet in Riyadh on Tuesday. (SPA)
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Saudi Arabia, Türkiye Discusses Boosting Technology and AI Partnership
Saudi Minister of Communications and Information Technology Abdullah Alswaha and Turkish Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Abdulkadir Uraloglu meet in Riyadh on Tuesday. (SPA)
Saudi Minister of Communications and Information Technology Abdullah Alswaha held talks in Riyadh on Tuesday with Turkish Minister of Transport and Infrastructure Abdulkadir Uraloglu on opportunities to expand investment between their countries and strengthen cooperation in digital infrastructure.
They discussed prospects for partnership between Saudi Arabia and Türkiye in digital infrastructure, technology, artificial intelligence, and smart mobility solutions.
They also tackled linking technological enablers with the transport sector to support the growth of the digital economy and open new horizons for partnership in the smart era.
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