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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?

#31

Post by tuvan »

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.…

Google sheets also does this and even uses regional formatting standards. I can't copy values between programs because some are using ',' for decimals and some are using '.' its VERY annoying

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

#32

Post by bakuninsbart »

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.…

For me the worst is that these settings sometimes reset after background updates... I don't know how many times I've tried to do a simple aggregation or something in Excel and was flustered by why it didn't work, only to finally figure out that my skripting language was set to german instead of English... Yes, the actual commands are also language specific.

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

#33

Post by ratherbefuddled »

The only answer to the question is because google make more money if you sign in and share location data.

There's no other logical reason a rough guess about where you might be in the world is a better method for determining your language needs than the specific request from the browser.

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

#35

Post by dan_hawkins »

arepublicadoceu wrote: post #22

My personal papercut is with YouTube. It doesn’t care that: - my browser is in English - that I’m logged in and with English as my language - that my region is set to the U.S. - that I only used English keywords on the search box It still gives me Portuguese results as my geo ip is in Brazil. It’s infuriating.

Same for me here in Denmark for google and gmail - I don't f***g speak Danish!

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

#36

Post by LamboJ »

I think part of the reason might be that the browser settings aren't as reliable as location data. A lot of people even outside the US, have their browser/OS set to en-US from the default configuration. Even if they might be located in France or India. If Google had determined that was the case more than 50% of the time, then I can see why they favour using location for language instead of browser settings.

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

#37

Post by yen223 »

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #27

Google goes further than that. If you go for a holiday in Thailand, you'll get all your search results dated with the Buddhist calendar instead of the Gregorian calendar. Nice work, world's best and brightest.

I've been on holiday to Thailand, and Google most definitely did not use the buddhist calendar for my search results

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

#38

Post by andromeduck »

_Anima_ wrote: post #18

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 F…

How did you even figure that one out?

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

#39

Post by 0x006A »

Arnt wrote: post #30

This doesn't even consider the possibility that location might be a more accurate indication of what language(s) the human user knows/prefers language than the browser setting is. Which it may or may not be. But I'm shocked by the headline, "Why does Google get internationalization wrong?" that just presume that Google hasn't collected data on this. After all, Google is famous for data collected and data-driven decis…

Its more like they fucked it up with some AI driven A/B testing and think they are doing the right thing but actually its just all broken now.

They used to have /ncr (no country redirect) - open that in incognito mode and you have to accept some TOS in a language based on some idea of where the IP is.

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

#40

Post by Cthulhu_ »

I built an iOS app once for a Dutch audience. We used the device's language as the app's language, because that makes sense, right? It's the same with the preferred language in a browser, right?

Wrong; we got complaints from users that their app was in English instead of Dutch. Even though their device was set to English or another unsupported language.

We begrudgingly added an app specific language preference. I repeated this later on for a package shipping webapp where on the login screen (and elsewhere iirc?) you can select a language; it defaults to your browser's Accept-Language header, but allows the user to override it.

Lesson learned; Accept-Language is fine for the initial language, and if that header is not to be trusted, maybe IP / geolocation based. But always offer an easy way to set the language; you may be dealing with someone who doesn't live in the country of origin on a device / browser that isn't theirs.

Also remember that location, locale and language are three different concepts entirely.

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