Comment by literalAardvark
5 hours ago
I think this plays a part, but the truth is that Google doesn't need to do that, Chinese open models are already doing that by themselves.
So perhaps another part is just Google showing that they can indeed play at the big boys table.
There is demand for US open models.
I sincerely wonder why. Chinese censorship is only really relevant if you're doing anti China stuff, which is to say never, while the Western kind of model censorship ( a combination of copyrights and general fairness ) are something everyone's had to work around at least once, even if just for writing an interesting story.