I’d love to use Bard but I can’t because my Google account uses a custom domain through Google Workspaces or whatever the hell its called. I love being punished by Google for using their other products.
Typically features like this are disabled by default for Workspace so that admins can opt-in to them. This has happened for years with many features. Part of the selling point of Workspace is stability and control.
In this particular case, I would guess (I have no inside info) that companies are sensitive to use of AI tools like Bard/ChatGPT on their company machines, and want the ability to block access.
All this boils down to Workspace customers are companies, not individuals.
I think they don't know their market. For every IT guy who doesn't want users stumbling across a new Google product at work and uploading corporate documents to it, there is some executive who hates their 'buggy' IT systems because half the stuff he uses on his home PC doesn't work properly from a work account.
The smart move would have been for workspace accounts to work exactly the same as consumer accounts by default, and then something akin to group policy for admins to disable features. For new stuff like this, let the admins have a control for 'all future products'.
This works the other way though, Google adds a new button to Gmail and the IT illiterate exec gets in touch to ask what it is or clicks it not knowing it does something they don't want to do, and suddenly the IT team find out from users that their policies and documentation are out of date.
It may not be the option we like as tech-aware users, and I've found it annoying in the past at a previous role where I was always asking our Workspace admin to enable features. But, I don't think it's the wrong choice.
You're on a business account. Businesses need control of how products are rolled out to their users. Compliance, support, etc, etc.
It's not really fair to cast your _business_ usage of Google as the same as their consumer products. I have a personal and business account. In general, business accounts have far more available to them. They often just need some switches flipped in the admin panels.
Sort of. If you have a Google Workspace account, and Microsoft launches some neat tool, the Google domain admin can't really control whether or not you use it. So Google just kind of punishes themselves here.
I'd love to give it a try as well (as a paying OpenAI customer, and as a paying Google customer). It seems European Union isn't good enough of a market to launch it for Google. Google just doesn't have resources OpenAI has, it seems.
Yes, yes.. yet, somehow they all operate in EU. Google somehow can't. Not to mention (non) availability of pixel and similar which have nothing to do with the above.
Eh, I hate to say it, but this is probably the right move (if there's a switch to get it if you really want it, which other commenters are saying there is). Enough businesses are rapidly adopting "no GPT/Bard use in the workplace for IP/liability reasons" policies that it makes sense to default to opt-in for Workspaces accounts.
I don't care that it's opt-in. I care that it didn't tell me I could enable it and so assumed it was impossible. Also, perhaps it was not originally available? I don't know.
This has been an issue for so long, why don't they just let you attach a custom domain to a normal account? Paywall it behind the Google One subscription if you must, it would still be an improvement over having to deal with the needlessly bloated admin interface (for single-user purposes) and randomly being locked out of features that haven't been cleared as "business ready" yet.
I believe so, I haven’t had any issues at all. I use my email for my business and personal and in all the dealings I’ve done with different providers, none have ever marked me spam. I also have a very spam-looking domain so I might have a better than average say on it.
I just don’t want to manage switching accounts or profiles or whatever, plus I’m salty about it, plus people think it’s the runner-up so I’ll use ChatGPT for now.
I don't use Bard for another reason: Google's nefarious history of canceling its services out of the blue. Is there any guarantee that Bard is not going to end up like G+, G Reader, and several other Google apps/services?
I'm still mourning Inbox, and my muscle memory goes to inbox.google.com instead of mail.google.com in solemn protest. But, in this case, it doesn't really matter a ton if it disappears.
