Visiting the Google House: Google Prague shows what you (still) can not buy | Hacker News Reader

Visiting the Google House: Google Prague shows what you (still) can not buy

translate.google.com

It's unfortunately a machine translation, because I haven't found any English-speaking media talking about this yet. If I find any better link about the same event, I will link it.

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As a Czech resident, it is discouraging to see Google show that you can build a futuristic home using Google products, but Google will not be bothered to make such products available to Central/Eastern Europeans -- and it's likely the same for any other country that's outside Western Europe and North America.

It's not just google. Try ordering something from Amazon when you're in Romania or a 100 other examples.

For some of these I can see a distant justification in increased risk of fraud (but they should then work harder on mitigating that fraud), for others I can see no justification at all.

Yea never even bothered ordering things online in Romania the internet is probably the best in Europe but very few western companies offer anything there.

Luckily you can always order stuff and have it delivered to a western address then have it hand shipped trough connection to Eastern Europe for a fee.

Or just move to west Europe. Still miss the speed though.

It's not much better in Western Europe either. The odd limited choice of Nexus models long after launch in the US and maybe a Chromecast if you're lucky.

I've taken to completely ignoring news about Google hardware products, since outside the US they are about as relevant as news about in-n-out burger.

This, plus Google's retarded approach to geo-location, language and it's arrogance towards non-American ideas (and laws!) concerning privacy makes Google a surprisingly non-internationally oriented company.

Companies like Apple and Microsoft are fully international, Amazon is making a serious effort to get there, but Google barely seems to make an effort.

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