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Comment by croes | Hacker News Reader

And how does google satisfy a countries laws if they associate a customer with the wrong country?

In this article, Google wasn't incorrect though - this person just wanted the rules for a country they werent in to apply instead of local rules. Google made a good faith attempt to comply with local rules for this customer based on the (correct) location data they had.

What about Dan Schroeder? Associated with Thailand, never been to Thailand, didn't travel for 2 years.

I'm curious if you have sources as to:

A. How long this person was in Malaysia

B. What local laws they may have been in breach of or in jeopardy of breaching(or Google)

C. What specific local rules/laws Google was attempting to comply with in good faith(if any)

A. They were in Malaysia at the time they attempted to get Google to change them to Germany: "To clarify, I requested that Google leave my country association as Germany. I was in Malaysia when I made this request"

B & C. I'm not a lawyer, but unless you're suggesting the law in Germany and Malaysia has literally no difference to the services Google provides, I'm not sure what your point is.

You can just say you don't know.

I still wonder if they changed the currency and the prices in the store accordingly or if he still had to pay european prices.

Unlike computer code, laws tend to have wiggle room. IANAL, but I expect in this case "best effort" is good enough.

How but just asking your customer instead of guessing by unreliable factors?

If they had asked the OP, he would have told them Germany, not Thailand, so they likely would not be in compliance with the law.

They could demand proof of residency, that's the correct way.

Is there any reason to believe that asking would be remotely reliable? There's a reason that liquor stores don't just ask people whether they're over 21.

Yet, online that’s all websites 18+ and 21+ do.

Does the liquor store estimate your age or do they ask for your id? Google should ask and then could demand proof.

What would they ask for? You can have residency in many countries.

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