To clarify, you are not parsing a JSON response, you are using a Perl data structure returned by the module. There no JSON handling in your code and it’s irrelevant to what you’re doing whether or not Geo::Coder::Google does so under the hood. I also think this is closer to the kind of approach you want than assuming data positions will remain immutable–

my $location = $geocoder->geocode(location => "STRING");

for my $component ( @{ $location->{address_components} } )
{
    next unless grep $_ eq "country", @{$component->{types}};
    print $component->{long_name}, $/;
}
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