China's strategy of building their own islands seems to have been overruled as well, although I think the wrinkle of datacenter islands being in (previously?) international waters might be different enough.
What happens if an underwater volcano goes off one night, and the next morning there's a new island in international waters? Presumably there wouldn't be any guano to fall prey to the US Guano Islands act [1].
>China's strategy of building their own islands seems to have been overruled as well
The rulings of international courts on such matters are irrelevant. Unless someone militarily stops them, or applies enough leverage elsewhere to convince them to stop, they will continue to build the islands and they continue to treat them as Chinese territory. The constant and aggressive American naval presence is the only thing stopping China from claiming the South China Sea as territorial waters.
I think such rulings would be quite relevant to a private company with no military to speak of. While the Philippines or Japan can't quite tell China to shove off, they could certainly tell Microsoft or Google, and this ruling says that it's quite within their rights to do so.
Tell Google to shove off over what? I don't follow.
Google building a island, claiming sovereignty, and hosting from there, as opposed to from some third country, would be without consequence regardless of whether their claim to sovereignty is deemed legitimate by some international court.
What happens if an underwater volcano goes off one night, and the next morning there's a new island in international waters? Presumably there wouldn't be any guano to fall prey to the US Guano Islands act [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guano_Islands_Act