10 ms·

Honestly, announcing public release in 180+ countries, and omitting that you are leaving out half of western civilization, it's outright malignant.

jasonvorhe 3y ago
As if overly specific semi-truths are anything new in marketing speak. :)
bioemerl 3y ago
I do not think it's remotely fair to Google to be angry at them for following EU laws.
- mellosouls 3y ago
  Are you being sarcastic or trolling? 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.
  - sclarisse 3y ago
    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.
    - mellosouls 3y ago
      No, the imperialistic moralising is thinking a corporation gets to make the rules over democratic institutions.
      - _Wintermute 3y ago
        If you consistently fine a company for breaking your rules, you can't then demand access to their products that might break your rules.
        mellosouls 3y ago
        Maybe they shouldn't break the rules instead?
        zwily 3y ago
        There are a couple ways to do that. One is by not offering the product.
        bioemerl 3y ago
        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.
        mellosouls 3y ago
        That's a related but different point to here, it's not a counter argument.
      - carlosjobim 3y ago
        How do you reason? Google decided to follow the EU rules by not offering the service there.
    - Xcelerate 3y ago
      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.
  - bioemerl 3y ago
    > 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.
    - mellosouls 3y ago
      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.
      - ghaff 3y ago
        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?
      - bioemerl 3y ago
        > That's not for Google to decide. It is explicitly for Google to decide. 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.
      - 3y ago
- cccbbbaaa 3y ago
  If they did follow EU laws, Bard would be available there…
  - bioemerl 3y ago
    Why so?
    - bertil 3y ago
      Because it’s a large market and Google has a commercial incentive to make their offers available where they can legally do so.
      - bioemerl 3y ago
        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.
        ranger_danger 3y ago
        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.
    - cccbbbaaa 3y ago
      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.
      - bioemerl 3y ago
        Not following the law would be releasing without privacy compliance and trying to make money off it. Blocking the EU is following the law.
- ranger_danger 3y ago
  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.
beepbooptheory 3y ago
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!
- gcatalfamo 3y ago
  Western civilization was a figure speech
- siva7 3y ago
  Except when it comes to profit, there may be something special about western civilization
sclarisse 3y ago
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.
- prepend 3y ago
  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.
  - sclarisse 3y ago
    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.
  - jefftk 3y ago
    > 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.
  - d0gsg0w00f 3y ago
    OpenAI also hasn't been fined repeatedly yet.
    - 3y ago
brookst 3y ago
Don’t people just assume that new tech isn’t going to appear in EU for a while, if ever? Does it need to be said with each release?
- dukeyukey 3y ago
  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.
  - disgruntledphd2 3y ago
    And the UK has essentially identical laws relating to data protection right now, so it's weird that Google were OK to launch there, but not the EU.
belter 3y ago
They can map the Moon and Mars, but the back ancient maps of Mordor, don't extend towards Europe, the lands on ancient alchemists. :-)
factorialboy 3y ago
I live it the EU. 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.
- sebzim4500 3y ago
  Doesn't the EU have more than 5x the GDP of India? Why would you expect anyone to prioritize India above the EU?
  - factorialboy 3y ago
    I've given my reasons above. Today, India enjoys a population dividend (compared vs. China) and an unparalleled growth trajectory (vs. EU / USA). Large enough businesses invest in the future, with 5-15 year timeframes.
    - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      India is a difficult place for foreign companies to do business, so investment opportunities are limited.
    - factorialboy 3y ago
      Times are changing Sean (@seanmcdirmid) > 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'. https://indianembassynetherlands.gov.in/page/ease-of-doing-business-in-india/ https://indianembassynetherlands.gov.in/page/ease-of-doing-b...
- alwayseasy 3y ago
  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.
hfhdndnfbdbd 3y ago
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)
gniv 3y ago
I wonder if they omitted the explanation -- ie, how exactly it violates GDPR -- since it might get others in trouble (notably ChatGPT).
amadeuspagel 3y ago
What entitlement! What justifies this? What is so special about europe?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
gdy 3y ago
"it's outright malignant" Reminds me of 'when you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.'
washadjeffmad 3y ago
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.
singularity2001 3y ago
Germany was explicitly included in the 180+ countries list, so we will see.
- aembleton 3y ago
  I can't see it in here: https://support.google.com/bard/answer/13575153?hl=en&sjid=16437971511608496519-NA https://support.google.com/bard/answer/13575153?hl=en&sjid=1...

jasonvorhe 3y ago

As if overly specific semi-truths are anything new in marketing speak. :)

bioemerl 3y ago

I do not think it's remotely fair to Google to be angry at them for following EU laws.

mellosouls 3y ago
Are you being sarcastic or trolling? 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.
- sclarisse 3y ago
  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.
  - mellosouls 3y ago
    No, the imperialistic moralising is thinking a corporation gets to make the rules over democratic institutions.
    - _Wintermute 3y ago
      If you consistently fine a company for breaking your rules, you can't then demand access to their products that might break your rules.
      - mellosouls 3y ago
        Maybe they shouldn't break the rules instead?
        zwily 3y ago
        There are a couple ways to do that. One is by not offering the product.
        bioemerl 3y ago
        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.
        mellosouls 3y ago
        That's a related but different point to here, it's not a counter argument.
    - carlosjobim 3y ago
      How do you reason? Google decided to follow the EU rules by not offering the service there.
  - Xcelerate 3y ago
    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.
- bioemerl 3y ago
  > 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.
  - mellosouls 3y ago
    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.
    - ghaff 3y ago
      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?
    - bioemerl 3y ago
      > That's not for Google to decide. It is explicitly for Google to decide. 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.
    - 3y ago
cccbbbaaa 3y ago
If they did follow EU laws, Bard would be available there…
- bioemerl 3y ago
  Why so?
  - bertil 3y ago
    Because it’s a large market and Google has a commercial incentive to make their offers available where they can legally do so.
    - bioemerl 3y ago
      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.
      - ranger_danger 3y ago
        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.
  - cccbbbaaa 3y ago
    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.
    - bioemerl 3y ago
      Not following the law would be releasing without privacy compliance and trying to make money off it. Blocking the EU is following the law.
ranger_danger 3y ago
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.

beepbooptheory 3y ago

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!

gcatalfamo 3y ago
Western civilization was a figure speech
siva7 3y ago
Except when it comes to profit, there may be something special about western civilization

sclarisse 3y ago

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.

prepend 3y ago
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.
- sclarisse 3y ago
  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.
- jefftk 3y ago
  > 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.
- d0gsg0w00f 3y ago
  OpenAI also hasn't been fined repeatedly yet.
  - 3y ago

brookst 3y ago

Don’t people just assume that new tech isn’t going to appear in EU for a while, if ever? Does it need to be said with each release?

dukeyukey 3y ago
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.
- disgruntledphd2 3y ago
  And the UK has essentially identical laws relating to data protection right now, so it's weird that Google were OK to launch there, but not the EU.

belter 3y ago

They can map the Moon and Mars, but the back ancient maps of Mordor, don't extend towards Europe, the lands on ancient alchemists. :-)

factorialboy 3y ago

I live it the EU. 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.

sebzim4500 3y ago
Doesn't the EU have more than 5x the GDP of India? Why would you expect anyone to prioritize India above the EU?
- factorialboy 3y ago
  I've given my reasons above. Today, India enjoys a population dividend (compared vs. China) and an unparalleled growth trajectory (vs. EU / USA). Large enough businesses invest in the future, with 5-15 year timeframes.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    India is a difficult place for foreign companies to do business, so investment opportunities are limited.
  - factorialboy 3y ago
    Times are changing Sean (@seanmcdirmid) > 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'. https://indianembassynetherlands.gov.in/page/ease-of-doing-business-in-india/ https://indianembassynetherlands.gov.in/page/ease-of-doing-b...
alwayseasy 3y ago
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.

hfhdndnfbdbd 3y ago

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)

gniv 3y ago

I wonder if they omitted the explanation -- ie, how exactly it violates GDPR -- since it might get others in trouble (notably ChatGPT).

amadeuspagel 3y ago

What entitlement! What justifies this? What is so special about europe?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

gdy 3y ago

"it's outright malignant" Reminds me of 'when you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.'

washadjeffmad 3y ago

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.

singularity2001 3y ago

Germany was explicitly included in the 180+ countries list, so we will see.

aembleton 3y ago
I can't see it in here: https://support.google.com/bard/answer/13575153?hl=en&sjid=16437971511608496519-NA https://support.google.com/bard/answer/13575153?hl=en&sjid=1...