Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden has been releasing a variety of documents that shows how the NSA is not only spying on US citizens, but apparently on its allies and foreign countries as well. We guess the idea of the US spying on other countries isn’t as ludicrous as it sounds, but having it actually confirmed in black and white is pretty damning. To that extent it seems that Snowden’s documents have cost US-based companies a fair amount of job opportunities in overseas markets, such as India, for example. According to reports, the Commission Election of India has announced that they will not be using Google as a partner to help create a voter registration tool that will provide Indian citizens with voting information.According to the official statement, the Commission has chosen not to go with Google after “due consideration”, but inside sources have revealed to Reuters that one of the main reasons the Commission turned down Google’s services was amidst the spying and surveillance allegations that have strained the relationship between the US and India, along with the recent incident regarding an Indian diplomat which we guess did not help the entire situation. Google has released a statement saying, “It is unfortunate that our discussion with the Election Commission of India to change the way users access their electoral information, that is publicly available, through an online voter look up tool, were not fruitful.”
Like we said Google is not the first US company to have their business affected by the Snowden reports, as companies such as Cisco have been similarly affected as well, giving foreign companies the opportunity to offer their services as NSA-free alternatives.