Google is rolling out an Air Raid Alerts system on Android phones in Ukraine, This is to act as a supplement to the country’s existing air raid alert systems and will be based on the alerts provided by the government. The company will also be highlighting the Ukrainian Alarm (Повітряна тривога) app to Google Play users. “Tragically, millions of people in Ukraine now rely on air strike alerts to try to get to safety. At the request, and with the help, of the government of Ukraine, we've started rolling out a rapid Air Raid Alerts system for Android phones in Ukraine,” said the company in a blog post. Google’s VP of Engineering for Android Dave Burke announced the decision on Twitter while mentioning that the system leverages the same low latency alert mechanism that the company built for earthquake alerts. The system leverages our low latency alert mechanism we built for earthquake alerts. The air raid system is supplemental to, and shares the same triggers used for, the country's existing air raid alert systems. 2/3 — Dave Burke (@davey_burke) March 10, 2022 “The system starts rolling out today and will ramp up to target all Android phones in Ukraine over the next few days. Thankful to our eng/product/UX teams for racing to get to a soln in short order,” said Burke on Twitter. In the same blog post, Google also announced that it is working towards globally limiting recommendations for many Russian state-funded media outlets. In Europe, all apps from Russian state-funded media outlets are removed from the Play Store. On March 10, Google had suspended all payment-based services on Google Play Store and YouTube in Russia, including YouTube Premium, Channel Memberships, Super Chat and Merchandise. It had already paused all advertisements in Russia on March 4.
