this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2026
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Why only Google?
court case not legislation
It's who got sued, but I assume that it sets legal precedent for all. I'm not German though, so I don't know how their legal system works.
It's precedent-ish. The first court in Munich did the hard work from scratch. The Aachen court copied and pasted their logic into their own ruling. There is a strong chance that for the time being other courts will come up with similar rulings under comparable case conditions. But Google may be waiting for a case where they are not quite as likely to lose if they appeal. Funny shit can still happen, especially if the highest federal court can be convinced to rule on a case like this. So it's too early to tell if this precedent has more long lasting staying power.
Other courts might look at it for inspiration, but since Germany has a civil law system (as opposed to the common law system that is usual in English-speaking countries), prior rulings do not really have as much significance as “legal precedent” here.
Because you start with one to set the example then spin out from there.
It's very rare and very hard to just blanket regulate something up front before you have examples of failure modes into the problems.
It kind of ties into the whole concept of innocent until proven guilty.
Nothing is allowed to ever create a problem. Then you stifle innovation change and improvement way too hard.
The problem is the lag time from the new thing to the regulation being put into place and all the damage that can be done in that lag time.
It's why the saying the law lags behind new technologies is a thing.
It's one of the few things we have to just accept if we want to have progression. We are totally allowed to though b**** moan wine and cry that it takes way too long for the reaction to happen cuz it does.
It's an excusable for how long that lag time is. Some lag time is unavoidable, but it does not need to be as bad as it is.