When I was young the Internet was a big deal. It was a world without borders. One could share information with people around the globe. It is all different these days. It is more about money and as a consequence about politics. There are endless borders on the internet and they keep up coming. One particularly annoying thing is geographic restriction for apps in app markets (be it Google or Apple). It goes like this: app publisher may restrict installation to people of some geographic regions. For example, folk in the UK pay a special tax which goes to BBC, so it makes some sense that people who do not pay it (the rest of the world) do not get access. BBC is an easy example because one can consume it's products from anywhere in the world. Enjoy the latest Alan Partridge show from a bungalow in Thailand, no problem here. How about services that require your physical presence in the country? Like health insurance (doctor appointment) or car sharing. You can not attend doctor appointment if you are not in the country. So why does this geographic app restriction is broken? Because it is not based on your location! It is based on one setting - which country your phone thinks you belong. In case of Google, one can change her country ONCE a year (and by doing so one would also need to update all the payment information). Why do I need to associate my account with a different country? There could be several reasons: I want to, I relocated, some other stupid apps forced me to, I visit several countries often.

My take away message: do not restrict if you do not need to.

If you find yourself in such situation, try to look for the app on ApkMirror. Perhaps you are lucky and can get it from there.

UPDATE OK, I guess there can be a situation when a company provides physical services in several countries. Let's take car sharing. Company operates in two countries, makes two localized versions of it's app. My solution to this - make one app and make a setting in the app that allows one to select the region. The situation where a company would make two different versions of the app and apply restrictions is a perfect example of technology first approach. Technically, it might be easier to go that way. So instead of solving user problems company solves software engineer problems.