I used ChatGPT (because no access to bard :) ) to convert their 180 country names to 3-letter codes and generate a world map showing where it's available:
Apparently it's 180 Countries and regions. So every little island is included, even if it's not a separate country. Someone at Google finally learned marketing I guess.
"Regions" is used so that it captures disputed territories such as Taiwan (TWN) and semi-autonomous regions which have country codes but aren't countries e.g Hong Kong (HKG) and Macau (MAC). You will notice that most airlines and international companies now refer to country dropdowns as region dropdowns, primarily to satisfy the Chinese government.
US tends to drop the u's in a lot of words. It doesn't make the original word french.
That said, a lot of english words do come from french. In fact, the english word favour came from the old french favor, apparently?
c. 1300, "attractiveness, beauty, charm" (archaic), from Old French favor "a favor; approval, praise; applause; partiality" (13c., Modern French faveur), from Latin favorem (nominative favor) "good will, inclination, partiality, support," coined by Cicero from stem of favere "to show kindness to," from PIE *ghow-e- "to honor, revere, worship" (cognate: Old Norse ga "to heed").
I literally can't tell how much you're joking. There's nothing French about the spelling of these contemporary English words, even though they have norman roots.
One of the neat linguistic things still in English from the Norman conquest - the word for the meat in English (which is traced back to German) is often the word for the animal in French.
Meat from cattle is beef. Steer in French is beof ( https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/beef : From Middle English beef, bef, beof, borrowed from Anglo-Norman beof, Old French buef, boef (“ox”) )
Meat from a chicken is poultry. Chicken is poulet in French. ( https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/poultry : From Middle English pultrie, from Old French pouleterie, from poulet, diminutive of poule (“hen”), from Latin pullus (“chick”). )
Meat from a swine is pork. The word for swine in French is porc. ( https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pork From Middle English pork, porc, via Anglo-Norman, from Old French porc (“swine, hog, pig; pork”), from Latin porcus (“domestic hog, pig”).)
This is because when the normans (who were the rulers at the time) wanted poulet on the table, they didn't want a live chicken - they wanted a cooked chicken and so the word the meat and the animal diverged in English.
Very basic words in english (eg water, man, milk, drink) tend to have Germanic (Anglo-Saxon) roots whereas newer more abstract words tend to have come in after the 1066 Norman Conquest, with French words eclipsing their Anglo-Saxon equivalents, as the Norman aristocracy supplanted the Anglo-Saxon rulers.
other fun fact I learned from wikipedia - "German-Americans make up the largest self-reported ancestry group within the United States accounting for roughly 49 million people and approximately 17% of the population of the US"
From the EU I say bye bye then. Nothing of value is lost, at least for me. Tired of being the product, and tired of not knowing where my data goes and to who.
You really think Google doesn’t spend a single penny on compliance anywhere?
I can understand hating Google and hating our current mode of capitalism, but it’s a little hard to understand making such an obviously false claim. Do you believe what you said? Or is it just edgelordism?
You should see how many European banks don't bother to comply with basic financial corruption protections and just block US citizens from having accounts
> You should see how many European banks don't bother to comply with basic financial corruption protections and just block US citizens from having accounts
You should see how many European banks don't bother to comply with the US law in Europe, and just block US citizens in Europe from having accounts in Europe.
FTFY
Now, please explain why do you think that the US should expose their regulations to foreign banks operating in foreign countries?
Well, my bank complies with local corruption and money laundering protections as mandated by law. I have to spend time getting an interview every few years to get a risk score. They and most of the other banks just send US citizens to their competitors instead of spending money to comply with US regulations too. It seems that there are not enough US customers around here.
>Well, my bank complies with local corruption and money laundering protections as mandated by law
My Google complies with local data protections and regulations as mandated by law.
>It seems that there are not enough US customers around here.
So you're telling me it's okay not to comply with a regulation because the market doesn't justify it and not because you're cartoonishly evil? Interesting. I wonder if we could apply that principle to other circumstances.
You seem to imply EU regulators do not require european banks to "comply with basic financial corruption protections". Any source to that?
What comes to european banks not wanting to do anything with US related entities, my understanding is that the primary reason is the non-trivial amount of red tape and legal risks associated with US entities weighted against relatively small amoumt of pontential customers.
Or perhaps just: "we need some time to setup things so that we can comply and we don't want to block a global rollout to countries that don't bother creating laws that protect their citizens"
Bard is not being "blocked" (more like, hasn't been released) only in the EU and nothing says it is past beta stage anyway, but that being said it can be a case of: "American companies trying to comply with regulation in the most spiteful way possible"
My expectations is that whatever mechanism google will implement to comply with EU laws will become the default for how the do things for everybody, for the simple reason that doing something special for EU would be an operational burden.
There's nothing inherently illegal about Bard/ChatGTP (yet). They just want to do stuff like collect all user input and train on it that's illegal in EU.
It makes no sense, UK still has the same consent laws as EU, and Bard is deployed there. Maybe an oversight? It does look like they don't know what they are doing.
If you look further down that thread, people also highlighted they included more countries with “adequacy,” i.e., that the EU considers having a comparable privacy regime.
A similar problem happens with all of their existing continuously trained models, like the ones that power their ad recommendation system.
They do comply with that. They can also comply with this.
I think it all boils down to opportunity costs. Implementing a system that will ensure that the models are fully retrained from raw corpus/logs within the required timeframe simply takes time. Time they don't have since openai and MS are pressing them in that front.
I think some teams at Google will work in the background to ensure that the whole shebang will be GDPR compliant while in parallel google signals to the markets that they are not a dying giant
It kinda is though? Like, to make a product that is illegal there when the competition operates (arguably) better within the legal framework. We can argue if the law is just, but this is not the EU treating Bard differently than its competitors, so it's more of a product choice.
I haven't checked, but OpenAI probably also doesn't have any office in EU and doesn't sell services specifically to EU citizens/companies. Thus they may claim not to do any business in EU and ignore letters from EU authorities.
No the EU is not treating bard differently. The EU is not doing anything yet.
I don't see how Bing or OpenAI can comply with GDPR.
The difference is that Google seems to care more (perhaps because they are under bigger scrutiny) while MS and OpenAI are pulling a "better to ask forgiveness than ask permissions".
Funny how no matter what you do you're damned.
If google decides to just roll it out everywhere like openai and bing did and then wait until a complaint or a lawsuit comes and only then pull the solution out of the hat (you just got several months for free in order to work on a solution while waiting for the complaint or lawsuit), well if google does that they'd be criticised because they do that. If they pause the relevant markets, well they're criticised because it's "immoral to be just complying with weaker laws since there is a stronger law somewhere else that should be taken as example for everyone"
More likely a legal opinion in Google that is waving a shroud of non-compliance and a $200m fine.
Result : every exec immediately stops everything until this is clarified. They have to, it's their legal duty and if we are talking Google scale revenues there's a lot at stake. Many shareholders are waiting to sue...
There is no way that Google will spend less than $200m developing Bard before it is profitable. By your logic, it should be the easiest financial decision ever to stop.
Italy has banned ChatGPT and European Parliament is already planning to curb it[1]. If I have to bet, ChatGPT will likely face some serious issues in europe in coming months.
Look, you can have the laws protecting your citizens from the horrors of everyday web-cookies and the privacy nightmares of the surveillance industry all you like. You can make them as heavy handed as you want, threaten massive fines on worldwide revenue, go mad.
You just can’t have them and also simultaneously expect everyone is going to find it worthwhile to deal with you under such laws, such that you’re outraged when they don’t. Or, well, you can, but it’s either quite foolish of you, or it’s imperialistic.
EU privacy rules are not about the horrors of web-cookies. They require asking for informed consent when you do things that are invading privacies.
All the annoying cookie pop-ups are not mandated by the EU; they are a consequence of website operators choosing to use traffic data in a way that some users might disagree with. You can easily do without. You can, and many do, make them clear and informative.
Those laws would be imperialistic if a majority of citizens around the world, including a vast majority of American citizens, would not gladly demand the same protection when shown what websites do with their information.
This is not just about a frustrating cookie pop-up; this is about having legal options to prevent spammy telemarketers from scamming your elderly relatives. This is about mandating a way to tell ad platforms not to sell you prams after the death of your infant, or show gambling and alcohol ads to addicts.
Surely there is a better way for the website operator to manage asking for permission for services that could be considered an invasion of privacy or avoiding using that all together.
And you are more than welcome to design one and submit your proposal to the Council. Note that no one here objects to asking for permission. People resent the intentionally poorly designed version that doesn’t give visitors a meaningful, informed choice. The complaints have targeted either deliberately confusing messages, modals that block access to services that don’t need invasive data processing, or pop-ups that re-appear as soon as you refuse them.
There are compliant and well-designed versions: if a website operator chooses to use a frustrating one, that’s not because the law is wrong; it’s because the operator favors their short-term profit from reselling data over convenience (which is almost always a losing bet).
> Those laws would be imperialistic if a majority of citizens around the world, including a vast majority of American citizens, would not gladly demand the same protection when shown what websites do with their information.
Imperialism for the good of the imperial subjects is as old as time. The barbarian nations need civilizing, and if they only knew what was good for them they'd gladly embrace our regime!
Or, as CS Lewis put it:
> Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their conscience.
You are confusing paternalism (deciding what others want without asking them) with informed democracy. I’m not saying to decide for American voters. I’m saying that, if you explain GDPR to American citizens, they overwhelmingly think it’s a good idea. I’m not saying they should think so because I know better: I’m saying that they do.
The US is welcome to use any political system they want. The current system is a government of the people, by the corporations, for the executives.
No, I'm not, I think you missed the context. OP responded to this statement:
> You just can’t have them and also simultaneously expect everyone is going to find it worthwhile to deal with you under such laws, such that you’re outraged when they don’t. Or, well, you can, but it’s either quite foolish of you, or it’s imperialistic.
By saying:
> Those laws would be imperialistic if a majority of citizens around the world, including a vast majority of American citizens, would not gladly demand the same protection when shown what websites do with their information.
This is false. Whether the other nations being imposed upon would embrace the laws if they simply knew what was good for them is irrelevant to whether a state action is imperialistic. What matters is the degree of consent.
There's been a strong theme in this thread of people arguing that Google should be required to do business in the EU and obey their privacy laws, and that would be imperialistic.
I'll have "cannot immediately use shiny new thing from faceless soulless tech giant" over "have to live under constant threat of identity theft and personal info leak" any day of the week, thank you.
There's this implicit embedded assumption that because it's the EU we're talking about and not some small developing nation of course you can't just take your ball and decide not to play with them. But of course if you can make the finances work you can do just that.
This is the balance of powers between the EU and the US. The EU is too big and profitable market to ignore, so it can get away with significant degree of autonomy - but not too much, thanks to US having a lot of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, and the EU countries approximately zero.
The European Union and other nations obviously cares about us military power it's use it as a critical part of their defense strategy. This is such a strange comment to read during a hot war in Ukraine when many countries are trying to join NATO
Everybody's gangsta like they don't live near Russia until Trump is threatening to withdraw the US from NATO, then suddenly it's "how dare the United States not freely pledge its nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and the rest of its military to protect us in Europe on its own dime even though we refuse to spend even a base amount on our own defense, we literally can't even!"
However badly the US fucked up the three invasions you mentioned, it was way worse for the people in those countries - so sorry, but it's an irrelevant objection. I'm not implying that US politics are rational, just that it projects a credible threat. It's geopolitics 101.
I don't like us interventionist foreign policy, but the fact remains that Europe and the EU benefit greatly from the US Military and it's Global power projection
OpenAI finds it worthwhile. So I guess they are working out pretty well.
This seems to be an inferiority on Google’s part and they couldn’t work out support at launch. I expect they will eventually add support, they’re just lagging a bit. It’s not some value judgement.
There’s a value judgment in the business-value sense. Once there’s meaningful revenue from it, or similar, it’s far more likely to be made available there. Until then it’s a business risk and a compliance-auditing expense for nothing.
Also a value judgment: the Europeans in this discussion who are confident it’s a sign Google is treacherous.
> OpenAI finds it worthwhile. So I guess they are working out pretty well.
The trade-off is pretty different for OpenAI because the maximum penalty for violating the GDPR is 4% of worldwide annual revenue. Google has a lot of revenue, from unrelated projects, and it makes sense to me that they would be reluctant to risk that on Bard. OpenAI doesn't, so the threat is effectively far smaller for them.
GDPR fines are based on revenue, not assets. But to an extent this is correct; big companies are much more scared of the GDPR than small companies just because the amounts involved get so huge.
Listen, I agree with you that the web cookie stuff is a pain in the ass, but I'm all on board requiring user's informed consent about what you do with their data. It's Google that's being a little bit evil here.
If Google is going so far as to avoid the European market, then I assume that they are not doing informed consent here, and I would consider that a little bit evil.
Yes, why have any nuance in our speech. Should just go all the way though and say Google is Hitler. No reason to stop at evil if we are being hyperbolic.
> can’t have them and also simultaneously expect everyone is going to find it worthwhile
wait do people think Google is going to forfeit the 20 trillion European market instead of just making some angry noises, adjustments and going live in Europe a month later?
I mean, the fact that some European commentators are so outraged over a few years’, maybe even just months’ delay because of efforts invested complying with the law… that’s part of the silliness here as well. “How dare our laws have costs that we bear! The rest of the world that should put us first and bear them for us!!”
There won’t even be angry noises.
(Although calling it a “$20T market” isn’t that informative when we’re just talking about a new unproven product without any obvious revenue itself that distracts from your main revenue product.)
Interestingly, if you use Bard, there are buttons that direct people to use the Google search engine to find out more information about subjects. Google has a problem that their search results absolutely suck nowadays, though. One of the worst search features on any website is on YouTube which is owned by Google. They seem to value revenue generation techniques more than functionality, but it is going to eventually bite them. We are seeing that now with many people finding better results using Bing or by simply asking ChatGPT.
Well, Google clearly want to be in Europe. Lot of money to make. What is happening here is that they don’t find it worthwhile to wait until complying with all EU’s regulations when rolling out their latest innovation. The opportunity cost may be too high. It may happen more in the future as well.
Why European people here feel so upset about it? You should celebrate the fact that Google or big tech can’t ignore your laws, and because of that decide not to launch —- or delay to launch —- their products despite the financial potential. That’s the trade off that I thought you’d been happy to make.
Pretty tired of hearing this, the EU law does not mandate tracking pop-ups, it basically just says “you cannot collect information about a person without their consent”.
There are a million ways to do that, like not collecting data in the first place unless a user opts-in to your research group for example.
But companies chose the most user-hostile one intentionally. Essentially forcing everyone to give consent anyways (just click the big bright “consent” button!)
The fact that you’re able to maintain any amount of privacy at all on the internet is thanks to the EU, you can decline the pop-ups. If it wasn’t for that, then you wouldn’t even know when companies were abusing your data in the first place.
Exactly. Nowadays on some websites which load for example twitter messages, they will show an inlined form asking you to consent (for twitter's tracking). The rest of the page loads, except the tweets.
I think the main issue is that the EU is very quick to regulate before it even fully understands the problems or what the potential consequences of the regulation would be. The cookie banners were an absolutely obvious outcome. And we're seeing it again right now with their draft AI regulations before anyone even barely understands what it is or what the problems are.
It's why EU simply can't produce anything useful at all because any European with a spark of entrepreneurial spirit goes to USA to start their company.
Not sure why you’re downvoted—the evidence is in your favor. This whole thread is basically about the EU not being brought along in what most consider a tech revolution, and it’s likely a direct response to their laws that are well intentioned, but practically onerous. Arguable, we recently saw the same thing with labor laws. The net result will be a smaller presence of American tech companies/jobs/services in Europe. Many self-identified Europeans here seem to be in support of that outcome—Godspeed!
This is the web privacy version of, “but that wasn’t REAL communism.” Look, you guys made a law, and what happened happened. When someone criticizes the law because of the consequences it led to, you don’t get to whine, “but it was the fault of the people responding in a way that we didn’t intend!” If your best argument is that the law was vague as to what compliance meant, then that sounds like a problem with the law.
No, I'd go further and argue that the root cause of what you see as the destruction of the internet is the entire industry responsible for those privacy and tracking issues.
Edit: As pointed out by others in response to your comment, the same industry who decided to act like petulant children and take the most user-hostile approach - the one I'd assume you're lamenting - in reaction to the GDPR even though they didn't have to.
> But they decided to mandate the absolute most annoying, user-hostile mechanism possible.
Whenever you bump into such user-hostile and annoying mechanisms, it is not the fault of the EU law but the service. They make it that way on purpose, precisely so you blame the wrong people (i.e. not them) and have you give up from exhaustion.
It was not the EU that “ruined the internet”, it was all the websites hungry for your data above all else. They “comply” in the most spiteful manner possible by design.
The EU law does not mandate anything, it's the website owners that decided to comply in the most malicious way.
What a mature position, "tHe eU HaS RuInEd tHe iNtErNeT"
It's the endless capitalistic greed and urge to monetize every single mouse hover and click that has ruined the internet.
Advertising. It's advertising that has ruined the internet. It's advertising that created this surveillance dystopia, enabling businesses and governments, large and small, to exploit you and your loved ones. Not the EU. Advertising.
GDPR is just a tiny bandage on the thumb of an encephalitic newborn, infected at birth with an opportunistic pathonagen. That pathogen is called Advertising.
That's kind of a stretch when Bard has been barely relevant since its launch.
It's somewhere between a 7B and 13B for most tasks, which can be run on a cellphone now, and we were already able to run better models locally on commodity hardware. Model complexity and capability are improving so quickly that there's no feasible way for Google to respond.
Sure, Google don't want to look like they're late to a party and under-dressed, but Meta just got a decade of advancement for free in three months with the LLaMa leak. They're looking for anything they can say to sound like they're making progress.
Benchmark this stuff yourself. Use logic problems, have the local model talk through them, and if it doesn't understand what to do, you'll be shocked how a single hint or seed change can lead it to a solution. You can even ask them to generate contexts for themselves that would help them solve those types of problem in the future, which work incredibly well.
Combined with arbitrary length context and long term memory projects, finetuning almost isn't necessary with sufficiently large models. It's really exciting.
I don't see why "western civilization" should be a relevant category for a technology release. You're leaving the EU out, yes, and that's relevant in itself. I don't get why leaving X% of western civilization or not would add anything to it.
(Btw, I consider latinamerica to be mostly part of western civilization...eastern europe too, so the EU is much less than 50%. However, people that care about the term usually prefer to exclude non white people for some reason)
I worded my previous message poorly, but I would say that keeping a product out of a market, for what I assume are legal reasons, is the opposite of following the law. Anyway, sorry for this–I should stop arguing about semantics.
Do you think they are doing this without commercial incentive in mind? I'm fairly confident they are, and they just decided the costs were not worth it in this case.
Google would be profitable even without the entirety of the EU, and I think their decision to continue using practices (elsewhere) that the EU does not allow, probably means that the profit gained from such practices far outweighs the effort of complying with EU + any profit gained from EU users themselves.
I think the anger actually comes from users upset that Google did not design their product in such a way that it complies with EU laws so that it can be used there.
Google is presumably not competent or willing here to uphold or conform to important law in a leading democratic region, which is rather different to "following" it - and if indicating an intentional direction, pretty much a disgrace for a flagship tech company - so let's hope it's just temporary poor performance (or charitably, a staggered release) unrepresentative of their intentions going forward.
> Google is presumably not competent or willing here to uphold or conform to important law in a leading democratic region
The fact they are democratic doesn't make all the laws they pass good or worthwhile to "implement".
A key difference here. Google is following the law. They are not implementing the standard that the EU requires because that standard requires overhead.
Google has probably just done the math and realized the effort isn't worth the reward. They'll probably change that once things exit beta.
And if they don't, that's likely the EUs fault more than it is Google. Google isn't just banning the EU for fun, they want that extra reach and money for sure.
The fact they are democratic doesn't make all the laws they pass good or worthwhile to "implement"
That's not for Google to decide. Google is a worldwide corporation, not some SV start-up dipping its toe in the water that is only expected to serve a tiny legislative region.
The absurdity of the perspective that they can pick and choose laws to approve should become clear if you change EU-conformance with US.
I'm guessing that this is a temporary situation and Google should clarify that as soon as possible to avoid looking arrogant or incompetent.
Not releasing a product in the EU is well within their right to do, and if the EU begins to demand not only regulation but also that all products are released equally they'll be holding back the entire world and Google should have the EU entirely.
It's entirely within Google's rights to decide they don't want to be a worldwide corporation anymore if they find it's unprofitable to continue being one!
The law says "if you want to operate in the EU, you must do X." Google looked at that equation and said they didn't want to do X, so they didn't roll out Bard in the EU. That's in full compliance with the law, no different than PornHub blocking Utah. If you don't like it, talk to your representatives.
I think what people in this thread are really frustrated with is that for a long time the US has been imposing its laws on other countries quite successfully. International corporations have generally found it worthwhile to comply with US law in order to operate there, and people were hoping that the same would be true of the EU. When it turns out that for some companies it hasn't been, it seems unfair.
So Google is so big that they have to offer all their services in the EU in a way that's compliant with EU laws? They can't simply choose not to offer services that may run afoul of regulations? If some large manufacturer has products not compliant with EU regulations, they're similarly also not allowed to restrict the markets where their products are sold?
Google is a US company, that's why they have to obey US laws. Companies don't pick and choose which laws to approve, they pick and choose where to do business.
The parochial "US company/US customers/US laws" argument here and elsewhere in the thread has already been addressed.
It's a long time since Google has been merely American, its on everybody's desktop and phone and is a huge multinational that is part of everybody's culture.
They’re complying by not offering the product. Makes sense to me.
It’s a free product. Any effort spent making it compliant is an expense not paid for. Any non compliance is a business risk, with a percent of global revenue at stake. Why take that risk for no benefit?
Maybe once they have a revenue model for it and find it profitable things will change. Until then the GDPR is not the essence of all that is good in the world such that only the wicked heathens would dare not pay it homage. That’s imperialistic moralizing of the sort which at this point belongs in the dustbin of history along with Europe’s other collective efforts in the area.
This makes complete sense to me. Amazing that a company is getting criticism for not making a product available. One thing I’ve learned from HN over the years is that people are going to be mad and criticize you regardless of what you do, so just do what you want anyway and ignore the criticism.
I really don’t like the way a lot of big corporations are handling things recently (especially with regard to layoffs and RTO), but I’m also not surprised that overly critical feedback by anonymous commenters on HN has little effect on changing people’s minds.
There is this very strong thread here that a large US company has some moral imperative to offer a (free for now) product/service in the EU by people who presumably would not make the same case for China, much less Russia.
The appropriate reaction is probably the same as if you hear that a brand of snacks is not legal to sell as food in the EU. You probably want to investigate.
EU is many things and has some wacky laws (check Northern Ireland), but if a digital service is breaking EU law, they are likely doing something you do not want them to do.
There are lots of agricultural goods not available in the states that are available in Europe, and vice versa. Few people take that as a signal that there is some danger in those products (well, except those chocolate eggs with toys in them), it’s just different places having different rules.
I can assure you that most Europeans think the reason US meat is not for sale here is because it is unfit for consumption: look at the debate in the UK around “chlorinated chicken” just after Brexit, or hormone beef. For most processed food, the (founded) assumption is that it’s full of HCFS.
The EU is not within their right to regulate products made by Americans companies sold to Americans. If we want to talk imperialism, this is exactly that sort of overreach.
No it is not malignant. The west needs to realize it is not the center of the world.
China and India alone (given the population and economic growth trajectory) plus the US (given it's economic clout) are the critical markets a for-profit enterprise needs to target.
> India has emerged as one of the most attractive destinations not only for investments but also for doing business. India jumps 79 positions from 142nd (2014) to 63rd (2019) in 'World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Ranking 2020'.
Come on, why are you defending a misleading marketing tactic. Any American company that announces in English it "launches in 180 countries" tends to imply the G20 is in it.
To say that someone is implying something that's false implies that they are misleading on purpose. And I just don't see that here. Yes, there was a time when one might have assumed that if a product is launched in 180 countries it includes the G20. I guess that's not the case anymore.
I'm sorry it IS misleading on purpose, Google's previous product roll out for 180 countries have included the UE.
Unless they have a statement about the why/how, it's still considered misleading. Hard to prove in court that it's misleading to investors but easy enough to ask around to any consumer on the planet and get the same understanding.
We aren't EU any more (UK), but even when we were, the UK seemed to get first-dibs on most new tech releases after the US, and more often than not at the same time as.
Why malignant? It's presumably still that number of countries, and its not like there is anything special about "western civilization." There is still a whole lot of planet outside of Europe!
That also tells us they didn't actually check for every place on their list whether Bard was compliant with local law – they're simply assuming that some small island country's regulators have no power over them.
Åland is squarely part of the European Union. (It’s also never really claimed to be a country, more a cultural exception within a de-colonization effort and a tax loophole.)
The relevant regulator if Google infringes the privacy of someone there would be the central EU authorities.
Indeed, and even the most cursory legal review should have immediately caught that, so probably there was none, and not for the rest of the list either.
For anyone wondering how Google could make that mistake:
- Talk to your data engineers more often: they knew that would happen and they need your shoulder to cry on. Don’t mention “disputed territories” and time zones unless they feel in a safe place.
- Several places are not fully independent countries but are somewhat sovereign. They tend to be listed in lists of ‘countries,’ which is really a list of *‘polities’*. “Polities” include distinctions like the Åland Islands being distinct from mainland Finland. Corsica, Sardinia, and Sicily are often not on those lists, despite all having a solid national identity, so those are not always great lists of polities either. And those lists often include military and scientific bases afar, like Antarctic bases and the International Space Station, so… There’s no clear name for it. Essentially, it’s a list of what comes out of a GeoIP lookup.
Like Åland, French Polynesia, French Guyana, Reunion Island, both Saint-Martins (French and Dutch), Azores, and Greenland are all polities with very interesting statuses around the EU. Staying “near” the EU, some scientific bases and areas with hardly any population on that list of polities, too: Kerguelen, French Austral Territory, Tristan de Cunha, etc. Those are more curiosities to give content fodder for Wendover Production and administrative exams than actual legal risks for Google, but I thought I’d pile up, to help you develop empathy for Data engineers building privacy filters.
The point is: there is no “mainland Finland” in the list of polities: just “Finland — FI” one of 27 members of the EU. “French Polynesia - FP”, “French Guyana - FG” and all the others mentioned above are not on that list of 27 country codes either. Therefore, any territory in the EU but listed as a polity might get excluded from hastily configured EU filters, like what Google seems to have made. I would assume that GPDR does apply to most of the places I mentioned, making the mistake that Google made common among all those edge cases.
rikkuri, you are not alone.
France seems to be being most of those headaches. However, both the US (with Porto Rico, Guam, and more) and the UK are impressive specialists in confusing sovereignty): the Faroe Islands, the Isle of Man, Guernsey, and Jersey all used to be somehow in the EU, but not when the UK was in. Northern Ireland is probably the most heated situation of all those. I will not go into the nightmare that is deciding between UK, or GB, or one of EN, SC, WA, and NI.
Andorra, Monaco, Vatican, San Marino, and Liechtenstein are generally considered outside, or “observers,” of the EU but in the EEA (those countries plus Norway). Pro-tip: EEA is de facto the relevant grouping in most cases.
More importantly, all those places plus many rather large actual countries (Canada, Switzerland, Japan, Israel, New Zealand, South Korea, and Argentina) have privacy rules that are equivalent to the EU’s and have been granted “adequacy” status. I’d expect all those need to be excluded from Bard for the same reason but many are not… Curious.
Are part of Denmark, not the UK. The other ones you mentioned are essentially part of the UK (I'm too lazy right now to look up the official terminology in the UK is for them).
I’ll let you deal with the threats from Faroese that you dare not respect their autonomy and/or independence, but — Yes, you are right: I picked the wrong crown that they are not controlled by.
I can’t remember: they are not part of the EEA, somehow, right?
Guernsey, Jersey, Man and Gibraltar (how could I forget the already overlooked victim of Brexit) are “Crown dependencies,” i.e., like dozens of countries, King Charles III is nominally the sovereign, but it’s somewhat closer. The main difference with say Jamaica or New Zealand is that were attached to the EU, and their passport is de facto a British passport (and used to be de facto an EU passport), but it didn’t say so on the booklet itself. They just had exceptions in the fine print of each international treaty. All have exceptions carved for the weirdest thing, like who is allowed duty-free alcohol on boats to and from…
This is the most informative yet entertaining rant outside of a Wendover Production I have encountered in a while. You had me at "safe space". Well done!
Excluding the EU and Canada tell us quickly this is something you want to stay away from. Canada has some of the worst privacy laws if bard is worried about them this might be a sign that your privacy will be violated in ways unseen before. Good luck bard users.. the adults have left the room
Honestly, blocked countries are not losing out. I can't believe how behind Google is on all this. Bard in its current incarnation is a disaster. Pretty much all replies are hallucinations. Looks like Google really was caught pants down with with ChatGPT.
EU citizens, you may be confused that you have been rejected. But isn't that what your government and the bureaucrats in Brussels have brought on themselves? As a Korean citizen, I have no complaints.
All of these besides Norway (Norway is, as an EEA state, subject to the GDPR) and Switzerland (whose relationship to the GDPR would be "it's complicated" on its Facebook page) are EU accession candidate states, so at least in principle should be moving closer to EU law.
Europe stopped being the largest market a few years ago.
I’m 2021, the eu gdp was US$17.2T [0]. I think that makes them #3 after China at $17.7[1] and the US at $23.2 [2].
So it’s not that odd that Google and others would prioritize other, larger markets above EU. But still seems pretty bone headed of google to not be capable of including such massive populations and markets at launch. Perhaps they could have used some of those 13k fired workers on this launch.
Thanks, good point. So the EU really isn’t the biggest market then. I’m surprised it’s half the size of the US.
But it explains why products don’t target Europe as much as while it’s big, it is clearly simple why a company would target the US with its single language and more uniform culture than Europe with all its diverse languages and cultures.
I would suggest that EU should produce it's own AI company to compete at that scale in their own market but we all know that's not going to happen. Just get angry they can't access the American companies technology anymore.
Remember Quaero? [0] Back when Europe (really just France and Germany) tried to make their own google competitor to prevent English language dominance? They spent at least $99M and really did nothing.
No, they just release it later. According to Google, they want more localization before they release it in the not yet supported countries. Which might be culture, but could also mean abiding by laws and regulations.
Depends how you count. China is significantly bigger if you use the methodology of a consumer market as "having people who spend more than $11 a day" or if you use PPP.
If you use "Household final consumption expenditure" then the EU is larger.
To chose the relevant definition of a "consumer market", usually what matters is where is the product made, the impact of distribution cost in the market and where are the profits going? For Alphabet, HFCE is the most relevant metric, because they're American and their product is software.
But sure, use a political definition that doesn't work for software.
Because the EU isn't really a market (at least for consumer goods), it's dozens of markets. Despite no tariffs and (very) roughly aligned regulations, you've still got dozens of languages, norms, expectations, and income levels. Something developed and tested in Massachusetts will sell better in Wyoming than something developed and tested in Bulgaria will in Sweden.
Funnily enough, despite being part of the EU for decades and still having a comprehensive trade agreement with them, the UK's success in tech is probably more to do with being culturally closer to North America.
OpenAI already went through a cycle with the Italian authorities (with presumably the German regulator listening in too). The fix was very simple: give users the option not to have their queries used for training.
We are still pretty far from an anti-trust case, which is generally harder to navigate.
GPDR and other EU regulations on privacy and AI have fairly simple principles: if you do something that is not obvious or necessary (like fraud detection), ask for informed consent. Explain what you are doing, make your steps traceable, allow people to be excluded from non-trivial treatment, to delete the personal information they handed over. It makes some processes a little bit harder to set up, but it’s not really a hard lesson you can only learn by being sued for billions. It’s closer to data engineering 101.
EU people should force their governments and regulators to change their stance of overly-strict privacy laws, otherwise the whole world will take off leveraging AI tools whereas EU will not have (legally) access to anything.
First that’s not at all how the EU works. Second, we have access to other services, I don’t really see why we should lower our standard because Google doesn’t want to comply.
If they don’t want the EU market, that’s fine.
I just checked and I see the option to use an existing email address (in Russia). It's available in the account creation form, as an option below the field that asks you what you want your GMail-address to be.
Might be A/B-testing though and you're in a group that doesn't have it available at the moment.
Well, I suppose that's one benefit of Brexit, isn't it? In all seriousness, it's a shame that the project is going to be restricted from a development standpoint, but, frankly, with Google's reputation for privacy violations and their former clashes with GDPR, this shouldn't be a surprise and, for quite a few people, will be a welcome piece of news.
The UK has retained almost all EU law, including GDPR. If GDPR is a problem in the EU, then why isn't it a problem in the UK given the law is identical?
Maybe it's time to stop thinking that some countries are better then others and just treat them as different. Your sense of privilege with ,,lol'' means that you consider people in Norway more important than in other countries.
It is a very valid strategy. If you do not have all the controls in place to comply with the burdensome requirements of the EU law (if that's the case), then why should you stop from releasing the service in other markets that do not impose such requirements?
A lot of comments here have a sense of entitlement that does not make too much sense to me, especially towards a private company doing a first release of a product. (PS: I live in the EU as well)
They should have used chatgpt to develop their controls. OpenAI figured out how to do it.
It’s weird when a company with Googles resources flubs their rollout. They have a main competitor. Their main competitor does something. They launch with not doing something. Typically, a company wants to launch with doing something better than their competitor.
Just to clarify, I'm not commenting on whether it's a good strategy or not, or whether they are doing a great job or not. I just find it weird some comments in this topic accusing of being "malignant" or feeling like Google owes them to have released in the EU.
I guess they might just want to launch something as quick as possible as a response to OpenAI and Microsoft's partnership. And this knee-jerk reaction left them with gaps they haven't had the time to fix without being very late to the party. All speculation though.
Maybe Google sees upcoming AI-related legislation in the EU? It looks better to have not entered a market in the first place than to remove a service later on.
GDPR still applies in the UK. Most EU law was kept intact when the UK left the EU. The only difference is that the UK courts enforce it, and it applies to UK citizens. Maybe the US doesn't care because the UK is a small market now :-)
When I asked Bard "What do you know about Edgar Allan Poe?" it answered "I'm a text-based AI and can't assist with that." Which I assumed was the result of an overzealous guardrail trying to protect personal private information. And now, when I see that Bard isn't available in the EU I'm starting to wonder if Google included in it's training data something they shouldn't have used.
I got the same. However when I asked Bard "What is the biography of the poet Edgar Allan Poe?" it gave me a full biography, looking suspiciously like it was cribbed from Wikipedia.
The entitlement of some European citizens on this thread is mind boggling. Of course Google will eventually launch Bard in Europe but I really hope they decide not to now :)
I remember when GDPR rolled around, our entire company paused all product development for half a year to do "compliance work" that changed absolutely nothing material about the actual privacy approach, just bullshit compliance notices and moving privacy settings around, and rewording options. I have some resentment from that and was surprised by the company not choosing to stop doing business in EU altogether (I wish they did).
They are. I was going to say the UK's ICO (Information Commissioner's Office) are entirely impotent, however it appears they recently fined TikTok £12.7M for data misuse.
https://twitter.com/thijser/status/1656943947556569090
Definitely not what I had expected with "180 countries"