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Comment by Valgrim | Hacker News Reader

Okay so after 8 months, after being released in 48 languages and 238 countries, for some reason, Bard still isn't available in Canada?

This has to be a joke.

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Blame your government. And I don't mean that in a hostile way. People need to temper their expectations when using a product that is in the crosshairs of their government. Alphabet and Meta aren't startups and they have tangible regulatory obligations.

I think you're referring to Canada's Online News Act, which would require companies to pay news outlets for the content they share or repurpose. I'm a Canadian familiar with this story, and Google's opposition to it.

It surprise me if Google would limit Bard in Canada because of the Online News Act. Wouldn't the importance of driving adoption of Bard be much larger than the impact of having to remove Canadian news?

It is most certainly not about news content - for which they already have arrangements - but links to news articles.

Hence they call it the link tax, but that is not really apt as the money mostly goes to rogers and bell, not taxpayers.

Google says "regulatory uncertainty". It sounds like they're unhappy with Canadian regulators. Be thankful your government is giving them enough grief.

The government is involved in a shakedown of Google for the benefit of bell and Rogers (whose lobbyists wrote it). I’m glad they are pushing back.

There is a law professor at U of Ottawa who is generally considered the most expert and independent on these topics and he has been blowing the whistle on this bill c-18. Michael Geist.

Rogers and bell have quite the grip on our governments but this one really takes the cake.

Likely the Quebec privacy laws which are gdpr equivalent in many cases. This forces tech companies to create a different experience for Quebec vs rest of Canada. As neither have enough user size, it's often easier to skip Canada altogether till the team has the spare bandwidth for this.

>This forces tech companies to create a different experience for Quebec vs rest of Canada.

That sort of seems like a needless barrier for companies. What is the precedent for that? It almost seems like those in Quebec have established some sort of "We're different, so everyone must suffer" constitutional amendment. But then again, I have no clue.

OpenAI has the luxury of being something like a startup while google really doesn’t want to make a project that costs them.

I use OpenAI as a tool but there is so much information that is inadvertently captured your regulators are doing the right thing.

The Canadian government is picking a fight with Google, Meta, and others right now so that's likely why Google is withholding something like this to help create some pressure.

Maybe it doesn't know how to speak Canadian yet?

I've heard it's a nice language. If you know English and French, you should be able to pick it up quickly.

Ok there buddy

I always wanted to say the same thing. I don't understand why chatgpt doesn't have the "regulatory issue" at all.

They're afraid of the Canadian government.

What is a Canada? More seriously, is there some regulatory reason that makes releasing it in Canada more difficult?

Yet OpenAI is supported in canada

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