In a case in the Supreme Court of Canada (watch the video of the decision here) some strategies were suggested for those who are looking to protect their company on the Internet. In an extension of a matter that began in the BC courts (and previously discussed by us here) the Supreme Court essentially ordered Google to comply not just on the google.ca website but across all of the company’s web search listings with the order to de-list; though they did not find the company to be at fault for including the listings in search results.
An article in the Globe and Mail (available here) suggests that similar orders are unlikely to be so well received and should not be sought by complainants for fear of inspiring litigation in other countries. That is one possible result but what I think more likely will be a heightened effort on the part of Google and similar entities to limit access to their sites based on geo-location. Already this is common place with video streaming sites to customers here in North America but travelers to destinations with even more restrictive governments are used to the concept of only being able to access the Internet through country specific domains or the need for some form of circumvention in order to access sites not officially sanctioned.
We suspect you will see a greater push to this type of access here in North America but watch for it to be marketed under the more positive sounding guise of providing ‘local’ or ‘from your neighbourhood’ results. One easy way to do this will of course be through the promotion of country codes domains such as .ca here in Canada. Afterall, above all else, search providers want to be able to provide users with useful and expected results if they expect advertisers to continue paying for service.
Think this might affect your website/app/game? We would be happy to discuss the issue further and see if you might be able to turn this into a positive for your business before the world wide web turns into just the wide web.