Talking completely out my ass here so if someone who actually knows things wants to hop in and correct me, please do! But something I am thinking about is a drawback for Google that you didn't...
Talking completely out my ass here so if someone who actually knows things wants to hop in and correct me, please do! But something I am thinking about is a drawback for Google that you didn't directly mention: What happens if they pull out of AU and nothing happens? What if life goes on as normal and, as you suggested, a different company with a different search engine comes in and fills the void? Honestly I feel like that's the worst-case scenario for Google. Most people don't give a shit what company is doing the search, as long as they get the result they were looking for in the end. And an entire country standing off against google threatening to pull out AND WINNING? That's great for making other countries realize that they can survive just fine against Google's threats. Tbf this only really holds for certain sections of Google like search-engine. I think it would probably be a very different convo if it were say, gmail (though now that I'm thinking about it maybe not even that would be worse for a country than for Google but I need to mull it over more).
When you're in Australia and you want to search on Google, do you go to www.google.com? Or do you go to www.google.com.au? If it's the .au one wouldn't users just go to the one without the .au and...
When you're in Australia and you want to search on Google, do you go to www.google.com? Or do you go to www.google.com.au? If it's the .au one wouldn't users just go to the one without the .au and keep searching with Google anyway?
Based on what I am reading here and my limited understanding of DNS, I think the answer to your final question is "no". Without access to a VPN to make it appear like they are in a different...
Based on what I am reading here and my limited understanding of DNS, I think the answer to your final question is "no". Without access to a VPN to make it appear like they are in a different location in the world, it won't matter what url they type into their browser. Any search-engine domain for google will automatically redirect you to the instance of google in the country DNS thinks you're in.
Talking completely out my ass here so if someone who actually knows things wants to hop in and correct me, please do! But something I am thinking about is a drawback for Google that you didn't directly mention: What happens if they pull out of AU and nothing happens? What if life goes on as normal and, as you suggested, a different company with a different search engine comes in and fills the void? Honestly I feel like that's the worst-case scenario for Google. Most people don't give a shit what company is doing the search, as long as they get the result they were looking for in the end. And an entire country standing off against google threatening to pull out AND WINNING? That's great for making other countries realize that they can survive just fine against Google's threats. Tbf this only really holds for certain sections of Google like search-engine. I think it would probably be a very different convo if it were say, gmail (though now that I'm thinking about it maybe not even that would be worse for a country than for Google but I need to mull it over more).
When you're in Australia and you want to search on Google, do you go to www.google.com? Or do you go to www.google.com.au? If it's the .au one wouldn't users just go to the one without the .au and keep searching with Google anyway?
Based on what I am reading here and my limited understanding of DNS, I think the answer to your final question is "no". Without access to a VPN to make it appear like they are in a different location in the world, it won't matter what url they type into their browser. Any search-engine domain for google will automatically redirect you to the instance of google in the country DNS thinks you're in.
Relevant post from a week ago
This is exactly the kind of manipulation the Jacobin article was referencing.
Didn't they try this in Germany? I thought they went through the same thing and it failed pretty hard there.
Everyone will just switch to Duck Duck Go