Just follow the law, Google, why won't you?
The company alleges the infringement is in Canada, its trademark is in Canada. It wants Google to remove ads which would be illegal in Canada from everywhere else in the world.
Actually, no. The only thing Equustek wants is for Google to follow the ruling of the Canadian court, and stop presenting links to fake copies of their products when searched for in Canada. Nothing more - but also nothing less.
For some reason, Google seems to believe that it is OK to obey court decisions on their national domains, while still breaking the law if the search request is submitted in the same jurisdiction but through their google.com domain (they certainly took this position for the EU right to be forgotten).
That position is rather obviously bullshit: both www.google.com and www.google.ca resolve to the same set of IP addresses; Google obviously also has a pretty good idea of where I am when I access their .com domain - both through my IP address and through the geolocation API in the browser. They have all technical means of complying with the law (and yes, I have at least three different ways of bypassing these checks if I really want to - but then, I will be potentially breaking the law, not Google - so it would be my problem, not theirs).
If G wants to stay as a global, rather than just the domestic US company, sooner or later it will have to learn how to play by the rules. So far, it's position was to follow the letter of the local rules as narrowly as possible, while flouting their intent. If it continues the way it operates now, then it won't be just the patience of the Chinese government running out - and governments, both democratic and otherwise, can be very persistent and persuasive at getting what they want.
I am pretty sure this point of view won't be too popular here on ElReg - but it needed to be said.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
