Some of these services are unavailable due to content licensing concerns (i.e. other parties own the rights to distribute the content within Canada), but absent those types of restrictions I view not offering services to Canadians to be ignoring a significant market (34,000,000 Canadians, 8/10 households connected to the Internet[1]) of people who have similar tastes and preferences to the Americans you already offer services to, relatively speaking.
I'd hope that any company not offering their services to Canadians would have a pretty good explanation as to why they aren't taking advantage of that market.
[1] http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/110525/dq110525b-en...
Without speaking for OP, naturally:
One of the biggest issues with web businesses is public acceptance of the new business model: think Netflix, Spotify, or even AirBnb, all are dramatically different ways of doing things that require a non-trivial amount of social change to gain traction. Changing society and the way people perceive/do things is really hard.
Doubly so if there are licensing issues in the way - a la Spotify or Netflix.
In other words, if you're going to have to go all-in and expend an enormous effort for adoption, you don't want to do it in Canada. It's easier for these services to proliferate first in other countries before importing it to Canada where consumers are already chomping at the bit.
See: Pandora, Spotify, Netflix, all of which built up enormous pent-up demand before they even showed up at Canada's doorstep.
> "I'd hope that any company not offering their services to Canadians would have a pretty good explanation as to why they aren't taking advantage of that market."
There's one very good, almost universal reason: Canadians don't spend as much. In fact, per capita, they can spend half of what the average American consumer spends.
The reasons are numerous and not at all negative - lack of access to stupid credit, general cultural aversion to debt-building, lower credit card usage amongst the entire population, high taxation resulting in comparatively low disposal income. These are all things Canadians in general take pride in, but it also makes the market less interesting to businesses.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/personal-finan...
compared to who?
Now Russia is a more relevant market, but the home-grown competitors are already embedded. Canadians may be miffed at Google.ca's lack of caring about Canada, but they still use Google.ca, and will use voice when Google lights the service up.
(I use Russia and Google here as illustrative examples)
Simply put, Canada is too small to be relevant.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16600877/ns/business-us_business...
My wife and I try to purchase Canadian things mostly and support our local economy.
If you've ever been to Vancouver, you'll know the lower mainland has an unusually high number of Starbucks. Yet in the last year and a half, a few closed down, and cafés such as Caffé Artigiano can still compete with them enough to still be in business in the same area. I don't have the exact numbers, but I know they stay competitive (my old housemate works at one).
Unrelated to my opinion about that, I'm curious what local registrar and hosting provider(s) you trust, and how much of a premium you're happy to pay to get your local-ness.
lespac > kijiji > craigslist in Quebec.
You can not post on CL and be fine. Kijiji will give you some results, but you pretty much have to post on lespac.
As a Canadian in the US, I sometimes joke "Forget 6 degrees of separation, Canada only has 3 degrees of separation." I joined FB in 2007, but only because EVERYONE i knew back home was on it and asking me why I wasn't on. And I'm like, really? I hardly know anyone on it here (I was long past undergrad at this point).
I don't know if it's just bad, they drive competition and accelerate innovations in that space. Facebook wouldn't had to innovate at all if wasn't for all these local competitors.