What's worse is that I can't seem to find a way to let Google know where I actually live (as opposed to where I am temporarily traveling, what country my currently inserted SIM card is from etc). And apparently there is no way to do this at all without owning an Android device!
Apple at least lets me change this by moving my iTunes/App Store account, which is its own ordeal and far from ideal, but at least there's a defined process: Tell us where you think you live, provide a form of payment from that place, maybe we'll believe you.
Yeah Google aggressively uses geolocation throughout their services, regardless of your language settings. The flipside of that is that it's really easy to access the latest Gemini or whatever by just using a VPN.
Wait, does that mean if I subscribe to Gemini Pro in country A where it's available (e.g. the US) but travel to Europe, I can't use it?
I'm really frustrated by Google's attitude of "we know better where you are than you do". People travel sometimes and that's not the same thing as moving!
I really, really hate all of these geo heuristics. Sure, don't advertise services to people outside of your market, I get that. Do ask for a payment method from that country too to provide your market-specific pricing if you must.
But once I'm a paying customer, I want to use the thing I'm paying for from where I am without jumping through ridiculous hoops!
The worst variant of this I've seen is when you can neither use nor cancel the subscription from outside a supported market.
To be clear, I didn't pay for any of them. I just signed up for early access to every product that uses some form of ML that can remotely be called "AI"...
Once I got accepted, some of them work outside of the US and some don't
Apple at least lets me change this by moving my iTunes/App Store account, which is its own ordeal and far from ideal, but at least there's a defined process: Tell us where you think you live, provide a form of payment from that place, maybe we'll believe you.