no, its different, in german case they served germany as a whole but for queries that where supposed to be blocked in germany they did not serve those to germans.

so you operated in germany and your "tricky" way to follow the regulations did not work. if you dont resolve to german customers at all, like you dont exist then nobody can theoretically say you are operating in german. so that is the difference for me.

The post said they eventually won that case, though

no its not, one is you dont resolve anything for the country and therefore dont operate in it, the other is you operate in the country and the block you implemented does not work for my customer. similar how a lot of the US pages blocked europeans from accessing because they did not want to follow the cookie laws.