Google Europe Policy Blog

Google says these will be the areas of focus on the AMP project: (from http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com/2015/10/introducing-amp-project-for-faster-open.html):

1)Content: Publishers increasingly rely on rich content like image carousels, maps, social plug-ins, data visualizations and videos to make their stories more interactive and stand out.

2)Distribution: Publishers want people to enjoy the great journalism they create anywhere and everywhere, so stories or content produced in Spain can be served in an instant across the globe in say Chile.

3)Advertising: Ads help fund free services and content on the web.

It looks like google is encouraging publishers to join its initiative in the same way how it herded everyone to get "responsive".

It's a relative thing - I know most Germans don't see themselves as privacy-minded, but the bar is so low everywhere else that the little things in Germany add up & make it stand out.

One example is browsing Google Street View and seeing how many buildings & houses are blurred out in Germany due to people sending privacy requests. I don't think I've ever seen that in Australia, but I keep encountering it when planning my trips to Germany. 3% of Germans opted-out of their house being included in Street View - a low percentage of Germans, but still crazy high compared to the rest of the world:

https://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com/2010/10/how-many-german-households-have-opted.html

I don't think Google would particularly care if they only needed to censor French connections . They're clearly understanding it as a global demand. See http://googlepolicyeurope.blogspot.com/2015/07/implementing-european-not-global-right.html

>We believe that no one country should have the authority to control what content someone in a second country can access.

Additionally, if this was all a misunderstanding, I believe it would have been cleared up by now, so the fact that nothing like that has come out in the last ten days tells me that they did understand correctly.