> Google voluntarily removed hundreds of webpages from its Canadian search results on Google.ca. But the material continued to show up on Google's global search results.
> So Equustek obtained a further injunction from the court ordering Google to remove the websites from its global search results.
> Google appealed and argued it was not a real party to the dispute, and that a global injunction would violate freedom of expression.
Google didn't object in principle to removing the listings from google.ca but did object to removing them from the the main site results. What does that mean, there's actually no objection in principle but there's enough technical challenge or cost to modifying the global results that they're willing to fight it in court?
I don't know if they should, but de-facto they can. American companies are, for instance, forbidden from doing business within Iran, North Korea, etc. Likewise, nothing stops the US from passing an enforcing a law that requires any foreign companies that do business with the US to follow US laws, even in their operations outside the US.
1. If you are a company based in and operating as a legal entity in Country X, the laws of Country X apply to your business as a whole, including services you offer in Country Y and Country Z.
2. If you are a company based in and operating as a legal entity in Country X but are offering services in Country Y, the laws of Country Y apply only to the services you offer in that Country Y.
All of this can then get mushy and complicated based on international governing bodies, multinational trade agreements and nation-state soft power but absent those constraints, I believe this holds.
The Iran example is due to political trade embargos, which apply not only unilaterally to all companies but are also often a part of international trade agreements via NATO, the UN, and the EU. It's a very different nature than the CA ruling in this case.
The second example, they can't actually pass that law. They can have requirements that companies must comply with to get/keep government contracts, but that is very different because the company can stay in the US and simply not try to win a contract.
It seemed odd to me, the objection in principle over jurisdiction but not to the original request to remove bad information, which they fulfilled voluntarily. But I'm sure the situation is more complicated than could be conveyed in those few sentences from the story.
I see your point, but the Internet has made this question a little tricky: they shouldn't be allowed to restrict what happens in other countries, but they should (or at least, they think they should) be allowed to restrict what happens in their own, and Google removing results only for .ca clearly fails to accomplish that. Countries and their courts aren't going to accept "we can't accomplish this order because global internet" for much longer, and the only way I can see to square this circle is more internet Balkanization, which is probably going to accelerate dramatically in the next decade.
> So Equustek obtained a further injunction from the court ordering Google to remove the websites from its global search results.
> Google appealed and argued it was not a real party to the dispute, and that a global injunction would violate freedom of expression.
Google didn't object in principle to removing the listings from google.ca but did object to removing them from the the main site results. What does that mean, there's actually no objection in principle but there's enough technical challenge or cost to modifying the global results that they're willing to fight it in court?