Google Nexus Phone Joins the List of Technologies Not Available in Canada
I know, I know, I shouldn’t even be surprised, but once again, Google tells Canada to wait. Just like they did with the Street-level view in maps and Google Voice (which still isn’t here). The Kindle is now available in Canada, but without the key feature (for me, at least) of a built-in browser. The TiVo is dying because the CRTC is blocking adoption of CableCard. Pandora, Hulu, and Mint aren’t here either. So, Google’s new phone joins the growing list of technologies that are starting to pile up due to a combination of the CRTC and other roadblocks, keeping Canadians back in the previous decade. I hope the Apple Tablet makes it up here, but now I’m beginning to wonder. I had to hack my 1st gen. iPhone just to get it working up here.
All the same, it looked pretty sad when I saw, the first day it was released, this screen:
Is it just me, or does that phone bear a resemblance here to a middle finger?
2 Comments
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Warren Frey — January 5, 2010 @ 6:58 pm
The CRTC was conceived as a way to preserve Canadian culture and business in a time
of data and spectrum scarcity. That time has now long past, and all the artificial barriers to innovation that are still in place in Canada will keep us mired in the past until we shape up.
David Drucker — January 5, 2010 @ 7:28 pm
I guess the CRTC has outlived it’s usefulness, but it’s going to be a long process of re-educating the public that Canadian culture and inventiveness needs to be exported, not sequestered and isolated. Are Cirque du Soleil and the Blackberry a result of CRTC ‘protection’? I think not.
I’d rather see the CRTC act as something like the US’s National Endowment for the Arts, mainly promoting and helping to fund worthy artistic and technological ventures. Instead, they seem to spend most of their time keeping things from entering the country or putting out edicts that get laughed at (Bob & Doug McKenzie were a reaction to CanCon, I learned).