The Globe and Mail reports in its Friday edition that Google has launched its AI chatbot in Canada after a delay tied to the company's standoff with Ottawa over on-line news. The Globe's Daniel Reale-Chin writes that on Thursday the search giant expanded the rollout of Gemini, formerly known as Bard, to Canada after excluding Canadian users from its chatbot's "biggest expansion" to more than 230 countries, in more than 40 languages in July. Canadians can now access Gemini in both English and Québécois French. "Our team in Canada was still working to find a constructive resolution on Bill C-18," Google's Jack Krawczyk told The Globe. In November, the federal government and Google reached an agreement over the Online News Act after months of tense negotiations, including Google's threat to block Canadians' ability to search for news on its platform. The tech giant agreed to pay $100-million a year to Canadian news organizations. Google parent company Alphabet announced the launch of its chatbot service to test users last February, with a wider rollout in the United States and Britain in March. The product rivals ChatGPT, a similar generative-AI chatbot from Microsoft-backed OpenAI that was launched in November, 2022.