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Why does Google use location for language rather than browser settings?

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Re: Why does Google use location for language rather than browser settings?

#11

Post by southerntofu »

jakub_g wrote: post #4

The article talks about Microsoft, and boy, it's even more terrible in some respects: for example, language of some Office tools like Excel is bound to the organization ! I worked for a French company, and I was forced to use web Excel in French, including keyboard shortcuts being FR-specific ("ctrl-g" for "bold" - "grossir"). I had my language set to English everywhere in browser, OS, MS profile, Office profile etc.…

> ("ctrl-g" for "bold" - "grossir").

Just nitpicking, but "g" stands for "gras", a literal translation of "bold" in the context of typography.

> I remember some HN user from Switzerland saying that IIRC either his IP is being moved around in geoIP databases between Swiss regions

And that's why assigning users to specific services/servers/translations depending on IP is the worst kind of evil. Please let us choose the language consciously in a menu, or respect our browser settings: whatever our shit ISPs are doing behind the scenes should not impact our browsing, and no, IP addresses don't have a "country" and the simple fact that you need to use 3rd party databases (geoIP etc) is proof of that and just how stupid the whole concept is.

Re: Why does Google use location for language rather than browser settings?

#12

Post by metafunctor »

My vote goes to the “Org Too Big, Nobody Cares” explanation.

Or, perhaps, just the blissful America-centric ignorance about how there are regions in the world with multiple official languages.

Haven't checked this recently, but a while ago Google Maps was still serving street names in a random language (the first name in alphabetical ordering), for streets which have names in multiple languages.

Re: Why does Google use location for language rather than browser settings?

#13

Post by Naga »

jakub_g wrote: post #4

The article talks about Microsoft, and boy, it's even more terrible in some respects: for example, language of some Office tools like Excel is bound to the organization ! I worked for a French company, and I was forced to use web Excel in French, including keyboard shortcuts being FR-specific ("ctrl-g" for "bold" - "grossir"). I had my language set to English everywhere in browser, OS, MS profile, Office profile etc.…

This is very annoying for me too! I am North American, but work for a European company, and my Windows and Office locale settings are all screwed up, and consistency reset themselves whenever I try to fix it.

Re: Why does Google use location for language rather than browser settings?

#16

Post by southerntofu »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #7

This is extremely annoying, especially when you're in a country with high level of English proficiency and a small population. In that scenario, you're not going to have a lot of local language results. Something like Wikipedia, which has decent quality in English, will tend to look like it was edited by high school students. Yet Google will force-redirect you to the local Wikipedia language over the vastly superior…

Modern search engines are just so stupid trying to outsmart us. When was the last time running a literal search between double quotes produced any significant results for you? Nowadays even with double quotes, they more or less all return what they think i meant depending on a plethora of criteria and not what i asked for.

Thanks for marginalia search engine, it seems to be gaining in content and starts to be more and more useful lately! Though to be fair more *transparent* special-casing like you do for Wikipedia would be welcome in my humble view (eg. for technical documentation pointing to the reference site, etc).

Re: Why does Google use location for language rather than browser settings?

#17

Post by vladvasiliu »

jakub_g wrote: post #4

The article talks about Microsoft, and boy, it's even more terrible in some respects: for example, language of some Office tools like Excel is bound to the organization ! I worked for a French company, and I was forced to use web Excel in French, including keyboard shortcuts being FR-specific ("ctrl-g" for "bold" - "grossir"). I had my language set to English everywhere in browser, OS, MS profile, Office profile etc.…

> language of some Office tools like Excel is bound to the organization!

That doesn't seem to always be the case.

I work in France, all my IPs are identified as being from France, the company is purely French and doesn't use English at all, yet all my Office applications are in English. I'm using Firefox on Linux, in English.

The only one exception is Teams, because for some reason spelling is tied to the UI interface, so I chose for it to be in French, but the default was for it to be in English.

Re: Why does Google use location for language rather than browser settings?

#18

Post by _Anima_ »

I live in the French speaking part of Belgium and have configured all my devices in English for the past 15+ years.

Apparently Google consider that if you are geo IP located in Belgium with your devices in English, you _have to be_ a Dutch speaker. While I would agree that French speaking Belgians are in majority using French UIs, there are exceptions. Please respect my browser settings!

The solution? I have to put French in my browser accepted languages (not necessarily first) and then Google understand I'm not a Dutch speaker and will stick to English.

Re: Why does Google use location for language rather than browser settings?

#19

Post by a4isms »

southerntofu wrote: post #16
marginalia_nu wrote: post #7

This is extremely annoying, especially when you're in a country with high level of English proficiency and a small population. In that scenario, you're not going to have a lot of local language results. Something like Wikipedia, which has decent quality in English, will tend to look like it was edited by high school students. Yet Google will force-redirect you to the local Wikipedia language over the vastly superior…

Modern search engines are just so stupid trying to outsmart us. When was the last time running a literal search between double quotes produced any significant results for you? Nowadays even with double quotes, they more or less all return what they think i meant depending on a plethora of criteria and not what i asked for. Thanks for marginalia search engine, it seems to be gaining in content and starts to be more an…

The usual excuse is that they are optimizing for results that produce clicks on paid search, rather than optimizing for your satisfaction with the search results.

Re: Why does Google use location for language rather than browser settings?

#20

Post by rjtavares »

This is especially annoying for Portuguese people. Because most Portuguese speakers are Brazilian, sometimes websites default to Brazilian pages or trends.

Twitter is becoming almost unusable with their suggested topics - I know they're awful for most people, but for me they don't even get the country right...

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