I've read all the posts so far and haven't seen anyone referencing Google's webmaster tools, where you can specify a geographical target (unless this is what CrankyDave was referring to).
According to Google:
Quote:
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If your site is aimed at users in a particular location, you can associate your site with a geographic target. We'll use this information to help us determine how your site appears in location-specific search results.
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Now, I realize that this tool is at the current time limited in usefulness and scope. But perhaps this should be the focus of people's opposition to Google's decree regarding IP blocking.
In my opinion, the onus should be on Google to not only respect the geo-targeting in the webmaster tools, but to even expand it and make it more country specific (just like targeting your AdWords). So, if you don't want your site to show up in the search results in certain countries (because you can't do business there or whatever your reason) you should be able to tell Google this.
Really, if their main concern is protecting the quality and relevance of their SERPs, this is the way to achieve it.