this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2025
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It would likely be impossible to redirect google.com without either sparking a cyberwar or building something like the great firewall of China, quite possibly both.
Blocking is somewhat possible, but to redirect, they would have to forge google certificates and possibly also fork Chrome and convince users to replace their browser, since last I checked, google hard-coded it's own public keys into Chrome.
Technical details
I say blocking in somewhat possible, because governments can usually just ask DNS providers to not resolve a domain or internet providers to block IPs.The issue is, google runs one of the largest DNS services in the world, so what happens if google says no? The block would at best be partial, at worst it could cause instability in the DNS system itself.
What about blocking IPs? Well, google data centers run a good portion of the internet, likely including critical services. Companies use google services for important systems. Block google data centers and you will have outages that will make crowd-strike look like a tiny glitch and last for months.
Could we redirect the google DNS IPs to a different, EU controlled server? Yes, but such attempts has cause issues beyond the borders of the country attempting it in the past. It would at least require careful preparations.
As for forging certificates, EU does control multiple Certificate authorities. But forging a certificate breaks the cardinal rule for being a trusted CA. Such CA would likely be immediately distrusted by all browsers. And foreig governments couldn't ignore this either. After all, googles domains are not just used for search. Countless google services that need to remain secure could potentially be compromised by the forged certificate. In addition, as I mentioned, google added hard-coded checks into Chrome to prevent a forged certificate from working for it's domains.
You block the DNS ups as well I think. Browsers should have more than one DNS address anyway in case one go down
The backup is usually a different server from the same DNS provider. E.g. google has 8.8.8.8 as primary and 8.8.4.4 as secondary. Plus the backup doesn't even always work on Windows.
Also note, it is not browsers but operating systems that do primary DNS. Browsers may use DNS over HTTPS for security and privacy instead of the one in the OS, but that usually requires the OS DNS to resolve the address of the DNS over HTTPS server, since it is considered a security feature built on top of classic DNS instead of replacement.
PS: Don't get me wrong, EU could definitely block google.com sooner or later. It just wouldn't be as easy as usual. The real risk is if Alphabet stops offering all of its services, chaos ensues. Companies unable to access their google spreadsheets. Services and data hosted on google cloud lost. People protesting lack of youtube...
And even if Alphabet doesn't do that, I expect a lot of issues just with google being unavailable and most people not even knowing there are other search engines. It's really going to be last resort to try blocking google, I expect fines or some such.
I think that if EU was to retaliate against any of the big tech players (which isn’t going to happen imho since eu institutions don’t really display the affinity for swift and decisive justice it would require) it would make more sense to start blocking the advertising and/or data collection. Like a continent-wide pi hole. Still getting the message across while not impacting the users as much. At least not immediately. That said, the gatekeeper platforms should be prohibited from providing services like DNS resolving which are critical for the operation of other services than just theirs.
They probably also could just prevent EU companies and branches from buying google ads directly. Vast majority of ads is geo-located, so there would be almost no ads to show in the EU.