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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?

#51

Post by makeitdouble »

yen223 wrote: post #37
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

Behavior is different if you’re logged in and depending on your settings I think.

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

#52

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

yen223 wrote: post #37
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

It might be a function of how long you stay there. Usually when I visit Thailand, I stay for a couple of months. Likewise when I stay in Ukraine, the adverts I'm presented with on both YouTube and Instagram switch mostly to Ukrainian. Or Serbian when I'm in Serbia, or Turkish when I'm in Turkey, etc.

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

#53

Post by trzeci »

Thanks for bringing that topic, for me as an expat it a major pain. I live in a country with rather unusual language, but I have only contact with English speaking people. And every service puts the locale of this in default - even with stating in browser settings what are my preferences. The worst part of this is that in many places I don't even know how to change local on specific pages manually.

VPN is the only valuable option for me unfortunately.

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

#54

Post by m_st »

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.…

Swiss German here. Je suis bilingue. My OS is set to English with a Swiss German keyboard layout. This works fine everywhere. Except: The Microsoft Store app just keeps on running in French with English content. No German to be found. It looks damn silly.

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

#55

Post by masklinn »

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.…

> Re: location based on geoloc: I remember some HN user from Switzerland saying that IIRC either his IP is being moved around in geoIP databases between Swiss regions, or getting slightly distinct IP each time; as a result, he randomly gets all kinds of websites in French, and sometimes in German. Imagine this.

Yep that’s a super fun one in all multilingual or small countries (where you might be geoloc’d in a separate linguistic community, or a country with a rather different culture).

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

#56

Post by _Anima_ »

andromeduck wrote: post #38
_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?

Came across the solution by chance, a couple of years ago. It's really maddening.

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

#58

Post by m_st »

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.…

Regarding Excel: Watch out with multi language setups! I was working with an English iPhone, an English Windows PC and a Swiss German Mac on an Excel file stored on One Drive. Editing sometimes in Excel and sometimes in Excel Online.

Result: Broken data due to SUM/SUMME/etc formulas, broken phone number recognition and (worst) broken dates.

What a mess!

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

#59

Post by nraynaud »

I'm so sorry for all these native English speakers missing out on the automatically translated pages put there to bait google and others. Then the "clever" ML people scour the web and use multilingual pages as rosetta stone to train their translation engine that they, of course, SEO to death.

Long story short, "how do we say that word in English again" is a minfield on google.

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