Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

smaller.fish

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 343 posts

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

#101

Post by zarzavat »

jsjohnst wrote: post #72
Jaruzel wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or, perhaps just the blissful America-centric ignorance about how there are regions in the world where there are multiple official languages As a brit, I am always irked that most of what I browse is locked to US English, as if it's the same thing as British English. At least if your main language is a popular non-English language you get the option to switch to it. This is compounded by those location drop-downs,…

> This is compounded by those location drop-downs, Where United States is always in the special top slot This used to be the case, but it seems to be becoming rare. It’s really annoying actually as alphabetically United States is way down in the list. This is how IP geolocation should be used imho, bubble up the probable location(s) to the top of the list, but DON’T assume the geo is right without asking.

While we are complaining about this, can we all agree that using plain for country is an anti pattern. There should be a fuzzy search.

So many times I have to search for my country under

United Kingdom

UK

Britain

Great Britain

England

Only to find that it was “Great Britain” but collated in the B’s amongst Bhutan and Belgium, etc.

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

#102

Post by Mordisquitos »

justinmayer wrote: post #70

I met one-on-one with Google’s senior leadership in 2000 to talk about their internationalization efforts. This was very early in their trajectory, so I even sat down with Larry Page and chatted with him for half an hour. A year or two later I’m in Tokyo and talk to a new Google product manager based there. I tell her it is insane that Google serves me Japanese pages on my English-configured PowerBook just because I…

> My theory has always been that in any given country, there are far more native speakers with misconfigured computing environments than there are visitors and nomadic folks like me. So it’s merely a numbers game: I may be frustrated, but at least Google and other companies aren’t losing business when folks with misconfigured computers close the tab because they got a page served to them in, say, English instead of their native language.

If you're right and they're following a numbers-game, Google's reasoning could only make the tiniest bit of sense if they were a disruptive minor player facing stiff competition. As it stands though, however frustrated a native speaker with a misconfigured browser may become, they're not going to flock to an alternative service. Plus, I would argue that a user that is not technically competent enough to change their own browser's language preference is the user least likely to even know where to look for alternatives to Google's services.

This is all the worst considering that a user whose browser is configured for the wrong language only needs to change their settings once. However, a user who happens to physically be in the wrong place for their language does not have the luxury of fixing the problem, short of using a VPN or travelling to a location that Google has decided speaks their language.

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

#103

Post by Xophmeister »

What happens in countries that have multiple official languages that can't be determined geographically? I only assume such places exist, or there must be places on the borders where the accuracy of geo-IP and the demographics aren't clear-cut.

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

#104

Post by silvestrov »

silvestrov wrote: post #84
justinmayer wrote: post #70

I met one-on-one with Google’s senior leadership in 2000 to talk about their internationalization efforts. This was very early in their trajectory, so I even sat down with Larry Page and chatted with him for half an hour. A year or two later I’m in Tokyo and talk to a new Google product manager based there. I tell her it is insane that Google serves me Japanese pages on my English-configured PowerBook just because I…

Better explanation: monolingual people thinks that computers will always be configured to the local language and any other setup is a "misconfiguration". In real life a large number of corporations (and developers) have their computers configured with English as this is the main language of the coorporation and makes IT-support much easier. (we don't even need to talk about how badly botched many language translation…

The problem with monolingual is the thought that there is One True Language.

It isn't so. I write half my emails in one email, the other half in another. Often emails will have sections in one language (e.g. quote from another email) and other sections in a different language.

Spelling tools must be able to detect language automatically to be of any value and be able to handle multiple languages within a single sentence!

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

#105

Post by overkalix »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #98
justinmayer wrote: post #70

I met one-on-one with Google’s senior leadership in 2000 to talk about their internationalization efforts. This was very early in their trajectory, so I even sat down with Larry Page and chatted with him for half an hour. A year or two later I’m in Tokyo and talk to a new Google product manager based there. I tell her it is insane that Google serves me Japanese pages on my English-configured PowerBook just because I…

It's a mistake a lot of companies make. They are so proud of their ability to lookup a country from an ip address that they forget that there are hundreds of millions of migrants living on this planet who probably speak something else. Not to mention tourists, business travelers, etc. I'm a non German living in Germany, I have to deal with this all the time. It's a combination of corporate stupidity, rookie & clueles…

There are also plenty of countries with multiple official languages.

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

#106

Post by ascar »

justinmayer wrote: post #70

I met one-on-one with Google’s senior leadership in 2000 to talk about their internationalization efforts. This was very early in their trajectory, so I even sat down with Larry Page and chatted with him for half an hour. A year or two later I’m in Tokyo and talk to a new Google product manager based there. I tell her it is insane that Google serves me Japanese pages on my English-configured PowerBook just because I…

In general I totally agree with your sentiment. As you seem quite knowledgeable in the subject I want to nitpick your choice of words in your closing statement.

> any company that uses geo-IP location to serve me pages specific to that locale

A company should serve you content based on your geographic location. That's exactly what "localization" is for. E.g. the content should be adapted to local regulations and law whenever necessary and it makes total sense to do that based on the visitors physical location and geo-IP is often the best approximator you have for that. What should be adapted to user's choice is language.

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

#107

Post by zmb_ »

justinmayer wrote: post #70

I met one-on-one with Google’s senior leadership in 2000 to talk about their internationalization efforts. This was very early in their trajectory, so I even sat down with Larry Page and chatted with him for half an hour. A year or two later I’m in Tokyo and talk to a new Google product manager based there. I tell her it is insane that Google serves me Japanese pages on my English-configured PowerBook just because I…

The VPN exit point for the big tech company I work in Europe for seems to be in Poland for whatever reason. I had to switch to duckduckgo to not be served search results in Polish all the time.

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

#108

Post by justinmayer »

darkerside wrote: post #83
justinmayer wrote: post #70

I met one-on-one with Google’s senior leadership in 2000 to talk about their internationalization efforts. This was very early in their trajectory, so I even sat down with Larry Page and chatted with him for half an hour. A year or two later I’m in Tokyo and talk to a new Google product manager based there. I tell her it is insane that Google serves me Japanese pages on my English-configured PowerBook just because I…

You know exactly how to get to Google in English though, don't you? A new person picking up a misconfigured laptop seems much more likely to get lost than a temporary visitor to another country.

That's not the point. People should not be forced to switch from one language to another, multiple times, for every site they visit, when in a country that speaks a different language than the one for which their computer is configured.

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

#109

Post by hericium »

When I'm abroad, visible under another country's IP address and my system's language is set to English, neither should be used to assign the language. What should be used is locale. Some users may have operating systems in language different to their own but probably more users have proper keyboard language set in their OS.

Using IP address to assign the language is the dumbest choice possible but using OS language is not much better.

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

#110

Post by kedikedi »

m_st wrote: post #54
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.

I think this explains why my old computer was so confused about languages. The windows apps were in Finnish, system settings etc. were in English. Then some parts of Google stuff were in Turkish, some in Finnish, and some others were in English. Every now and then some random app would appear and surprise me in Turkish. It was truly impossible to tell what language would appear after each click.

It was originally running windows 7 with English as the system language. Some software were installed while I was in Turkey, some (including windows 10 upgrade) were installed after I moved to Finland. Now I’m learning that my computer couldn’t handle this gracefully :)

Post reply on HN