France denies Google appeal, says right to be forgotten must be applied globally

There is no acceptable outcome possible here.

Given the international nature of the internet, having things "forgotten" by google.fr, but not by google.com or google.uk, means in fact that they are not forgotten. France has a point.

But having somebody in France able to censor stuff in the US is also not acceptable. I've got to, what, go to France and win a court case there? To keep my US-based content available to the net? No !@#$% way, France. Get lost.

So there is no outcome that is remotely acceptable to both sides. I don't know how it ends, but somebody's going to be very angry.

Maybe the "best" answer is for Google to shut down google.fr, remove all their people from France, and tell France to block them at the border if they want to play that way. This would be painful and expensive for Google, but it might be the least-bad outcome...