When I first saw Google Now giving me a travel time estimate on a trip out, I was amazed. Back then I was in college in mainland China, where Google services were blocked, using a proxy service to use Google's products on a Nexus 4.

Now I'm in the States with a new Huawei Mate 9. I set up my Google account and opened the Google app ready to live in the future (I heard that Now on Tap was bad but I had to try it). I was greeted with a blank screen. Opening up the app's settings screen revealed the following screen:

"The feed is not available in your country."

You must be kidding me because I am in New York City. Am I not American enough, as far as Google knows? I opened up my account settings and changed anything I could to be as American as possible. I cleared my Location History. I even tried going into Google+ to change my profile to say "New York, United States" and deleting my (Chinese) high school and college. No luck.

Fine. Maybe in some obscure database, Google saved my true cultural roots and forbade me to forget it. I set up a new Google account, using my NYC everything from address to phone number. I logged in. No.

Alright. Maybe it's because I used my Chinese SIM on this phone briefly before setting up my Google accounts and somehow my phone marked this? I factory reset the phone and tried my old account, then factory reset and tried the new one. Still no.

Ok. Maybe my new account was tainted when I logged into it on this phone without resetting it. I did a factory reset, and made a new account during initial setup while connected to Columbia WiFi. Still no!

So now I am out of ideas. The Internet seemed so, too -- Googling this error message, as well as the message briefly flashed on the screen, "your account is not eligible for the feed", during setup, yielded a bunch of strange rituals including the following:

Uninstall updates to Google Play Services. Maybe install an old version of the Google App. Log out of your Google account and log back in. Turn on Google Now in the old version when it's available. Now update.

Factory reset your phone. Skip everything during initial set up. Turn off location services (or switch it to device only). Connect to some VPN in UK or US. Login. Now it should work. And then some people report it being broken after some app updates.

None of these worked for me. I guess still, deep down, Google can find out that I am Chinese, or using a Chinese phone, and decides to deny me its service.

This is very frustrating. I get the point of region restrictions on services. What I don't get is why Google, of all companies, is doing this with such excess on Google Now, of all of its services, to the point of obstructing its supposedly legitimate. It does not include transactions. It does not include copyright issues. And it was supposed to be the future of proactive search.

As an aside, "this account is not eligible for the feed" is not something that a fan wants to hear.