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A comment on Google Bard now open to use. Parent comment

Re:Google Bard now open to use by kyrra on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @02:48PM (#35891671)
The problem of being a massive company is that everyone wants to sue you. They could want to sue you for money. Or maybe sue you because they think you are bad. Whatever the reason, when you're Google's size, you need to make sure you're compliant with every local regulation before you launch anything or someone may come after you.

Googler, opinions are my own.

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Re:Google Bard now open to use by skinkestek on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @03:04PM (#35891904)
If that worries Google, they should fix the cookie options on the Google I/O page on the frontpage.

It is wildly noncompliant, and Google should be sued over it like they were over the same thing in YouTube in France.

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Re:Google Bard now open to use by freedomben on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @03:20PM (#35892184)
> If that worries Google, they should fix the cookie options on the Google I/O page on the frontpage.

> It is wildly noncompliant, and Google should be sued over it like they were over the same thing in YouTube in France.

this really reinforces GP's point

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Re:Google Bard now open to use by feanaro on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @03:28PM (#35892281)
It does not since Google is maliciously and purposefully non-compliant with that one. It instead reinforces the point that they don't care too much about being sued.
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Re:Google Bard now open to use by wissio on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @03:17PM (#35892124)
Google is the only company that does this. Even product pages are geo-dodged in a similar fashion, as if the technical specs for a Pixel phone shouldn't be readable outside of some approved areas and the user is silently redirected to an unrelated page. It's quite surprising.
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Re:Google Bard now open to use by lxgr on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @03:35PM (#35892387)
More than once, I've had to use a VPN to order a Google device from abroad (shipment to country A, paid with a credit card from country A, while currently physically located in neighboring country B). It's beyond ridiculous.

At least the Google Store now has a country selection switch, but I suspect that that also only happened due to new EU regulations requiring them to do so.

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Re:Google Bard now open to use by simon_acca on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @03:22PM (#35892201)
Surprising that when it came time to restructure they didn’t adopt a model where the parent company (alphabet) owns all of the infrastructure and provide services to many independent smaller initiatives that would then be much less constrained.

If they are unwilling to let go of the Google brand (understandable!) then the parent company perhaps should have been called Google.

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Re:Google Bard now open to use by tasty_freeze on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @03:29PM (#35892297)
I'm always surprised when people that work at company X talks about practices at company X.

Even innocent sounding replies can surface later and cause legal or PR headaches for the company. If one person out of 10,000 says something about XYZ, it is way too easy for it to taken as the truth, adding even more burden the legal/PR problems that every big company is constantly managing.

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Re:Google Bard now open to use by OscarTheGrinch on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @03:33PM (#35892358)
How is fragmenting the internet good for Google?
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Re:Google Bard now open to use by withinboredom on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @02:51PM (#35891706)
Such a US-centric way of thinking. Not every country is as sue-happy as the US.
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Re:Google Bard now open to use by VWWHFSfQ on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @02:56PM (#35891784)
What absolute nonsense.

This is a list of countries just off the top of my head that has sued Google in the last decade:

    United States
    European Union (which consists of multiple member states)
    Australia
    France
    Germany
    Italy
    Spain
    Russia
    India
    Brazil
    South Korea
    Turkey
    Canada
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Re:Google Bard now open to use by ajmurmann on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @03:08PM (#35891989)
It's not only past incidents. At some point you've had enough trouble that you shift your stance from "we don't know about any issues in that region" to "we haven't gone through our approval process with legal for that region".
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Re:Google Bard now open to use by withinboredom on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @02:59PM (#35891842)
My current country isn't on that list. Obviously, you're missing well over a hundred countries on that list.
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Re:Google Bard now open to use by wtf_is_up on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @03:04PM (#35891911)
Goal posts: moved
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Re:Google Bard now open to use by pb7 on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @04:10PM (#35892789)
In today’s episode of “people from countries that create nothing whining about not having access to other countries’ technologies”…
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Re:Google Bard now open to use by withinboredom on Friday May 12, 2023 @11:06AM (#35917333)
I suspect you like watching DVDs and using your Bluetooth headphones while connected to your WiFi?
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Re:Google Bard now open to use by HarHarVeryFunny on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @03:02PM (#35891892)
The members of the EU are countries, not states (& the EU itself is a political/economic alliance, not a country).
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Re:Google Bard now open to use by CptFribble on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @03:07PM (#35891968)
"State" in this context is the same as the state in "head of state," AKA "a nation or territory considered as an organized political community under one government." Other examples of this usage are "nation-state" and "city-state."

It is common to refer to the members of the EU as "member states."

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Re:Google Bard now open to use by HarHarVeryFunny on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @07:15PM (#35894837)
So then why not just refer to the whole list as states rather than countries ? IMO it be weird to do so, but at least consistent.

I'm curious what state you're from where it's normal to refer to EU members as "member states" ? USA perhaps ?

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Re:Google Bard now open to use by gpm on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @03:30PM (#35892309)
"State" refers to "any sovereign polity". The US is weird here in that it pretends it's internal political divisions are sovereigns and refers to them as states, but that doesn't make every other country in the world not a state.

Definition from wikitionary (but nothing is special about this choice of dictionary, you should find a similar definition in any dictionary): https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/state#Noun

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Re:Google Bard now open to use by khazhoux on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @03:24PM (#35892227)
It would be exceedingly unlikely that the commenter was so ignorant as to not know France, Germany, Italy, and so on are countries.
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Re:Google Bard now open to use by HarHarVeryFunny on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @07:00PM (#35894654)
So then why not refer to them as countries - that's how they would refer to themselves (I'm ex-UK myself). Doesn't make any sense to say "I know they're countries but I'm just gonna call them states instead". The EU context doesn't make any difference.
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Re:Google Bard now open to use by khazhoux on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @07:07PM (#35894730)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union

> The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of 27 member states that are located primarily in Europe.

"State" made perfect sense in context of the post.

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Re:Google Bard now open to use by killerdhmo on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @02:54PM (#35891767)
lol dude, Google is being sued in like a dozen countries https://qz.com/google-is-in-a-world-of-trouble-from-governme... (and this article is from last year)
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Re:Google Bard now open to use by skinkestek on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @03:10PM (#35892022)
And for very good reasons.

The way to avoid lawsuits in civilized countries is to avoid breaking the laws east and west.

Start with the GDPR:

There is no competent lawyer that doesn't understand the basics of GDPR, there are only companies that are testing if they can get away by playing dumb.

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Re:Google Bard now open to use by scarmig on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @03:15PM (#35892104)
Avoiding breaking the law, here, means not allowing users in those countries to use services.
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Re:Google Bard now open to use by smolder on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @05:03PM (#35893469)
That, or adjusting their business model in those regions so that pervasive surveillance and privacy invasion aren't their core product. Apparently that's so hard that GDPR detractors can't even acknowledge it as a possibility! Honestly, I see it as a red flag that someone is arguing in bad faith.
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Re:Google Bard now open to use by PavleMiha on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @02:59PM (#35891834)
Google isn’t worried about individuals suing them, they’re worried about governments or entities like the EU fining them
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Re:Google Bard now open to use by mywittyname on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @02:56PM (#35891787)
The billions of dollars in fines that EU countries have levied against Google for various complaints in the past decade or so indicate the opposite.
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Re:Google Bard now open to use by yftsui on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @02:55PM (#35891776)
Big companies would love to know what countries that they will never get sued and deal all shady stuff there, does it exist?
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Re:Google Bard now open to use by ajmurmann on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @03:09PM (#35892011)
"shady stuff" like relying on users to be able to use their browsers cookie settings.
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Re:Google Bard now open to use by fnordpiglet on Wednesday May 10, 2023 @02:58PM (#35891820)
But many are anti US tech regulatory happy.
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