> This tool is not available to users under the age of 18 or in certain countries or regions.
Can you imagine what the kids (or any of the other lesser people) would do if they got their grubby little hands on it?
I did not spend 5 minutes on euphemisms as prompts. Nope nope nope.
Apparently EU is one of these regions. But what’s up with… chess?
Limiting access for EU users is an easy way to sidestep a hell of a lot of potential legal liability. It’s a fast-moving and complex regulatory environment that is focused on punishing/controlling big US businesses.
Option A is to burn a pile of cash and time to keep abreast of it.
Option B is simply… block the EU.
Companies like google are quite well equiped to launch anything globally.
And in this specific case, its a Chess demo, its probably something different
It is very annoying at most big techs to go through launch approval for something all new and adding yet another approved or checklist for the EU is not worth the tradeoff of time for something experimental/early.
> Limiting access for EU users is an easy way to sidestep a hell of a lot of potential legal liability. It’s a fast-moving and complex regulatory environment that is focused on punishing/controlling big US businesses.
Have you considered a less paranoid explanation, like... focused on protecting Europeans from the abuses of big corporations?
I wanted you and your sibling commenter to know that even though we're probably coming from opposite ends of the political spectrum, I meant no malice or schadenfreude by my comment.
Despite being a huge capitalist, I do think there's a sweet spot of very minimal regulation that works out best for everyone.
However, the blocking-the-EU outcome is obvious after a couple of minutes of thinking about it in game theory terms. Another one to look out for is companies (both physical and digital) that never even considered doing business in the EU, but who would have if it were easy.
That is focused on protecting costumers (mostly their own).
There I fixed it for you ;)
Edit: okay okay, I get it... Consumer protection bad, Big Tech good!