[mareksotak]

Some companies spend weeks on landing pages, demos and cute thought through promo videos and then there is Mistral, casually dropping a magnet link on Friday.

[tananaev]

I'm sure it's also a marketing move to build a certain reputation. Looks like it's working.

[HlessClaudesman]

Not geoblocking the entirety of Europe also makes them stand out like a ringmaster amongst clowns.

[moffkalast]

Well they are French after all. They should be geoblocking the USA in response for a bit to make a point lol.

[fredoliveira]

Not with their cap table, they won't ;-)

[peanuty1]

Google Bard is still not available in Canada.

[oh_sigh]

Are there some regulatory reasons why it would not be available? It seems weird if Google would intentionally block users merely to block them.

[wadefletch]

There's a proposed framework[1] in the EU that's rather restrictive. Seems like they're just not even bothering, perhaps to make a point.

[1] https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/regulatory...

[ComputerGuru]

Google and Facebook were, up until just a couple of days ago, in a cold war within the Canadian government.

[peanuty1]

Google made a deal to pay 100M/year to news organizations in Canada but Meta is continuing to block news links.

[mrandish]

I think there are still some pretty onerous laws about French localization of products and services made available in the French-speaking part of Canada. Could be that...

[simonerlic]

I originally thought so too, but as far as I know Bard is available in France- so I have a feeling that language isn't the roadblock here.

[noonething]

neither is facebooks image one

[throwaway4aday]

technically, it is marketing but at this level marketing is indistinguishable from shipping

[tarruda]

I'm curious about their business model.

[jorge-d]

Well so far their business model seems to be mostly centered about raising money[1]. I do hope they succeed in becoming a succesful contender against OpenAI.

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-04/openai-ri...

[udev4096]

https://archive.ph/4F3dT

[nuz]

They can make plenty by offering consulting fees for finetuning and general support around their models.

[realce]

"plenty" is not a word some of these people understand however

[behnamoh]

You mean they put on a Redhat?