This always baffled me. Although English is not my native language I strongly dislike UIs being in any language but English. Every settings on my PCs says use English, all the apps are English versions, yet every time I find myself in another country Google uses its language to speak to me. I'm not sure I will even find how to switch the language to anything readable once I land in e.g. Japan or Armenia...
Why does Google use location for language rather than browser settings?
111–120 of 343 posts
Re: Why does Google use location for language rather than browser settings?
#112I've had this problem with Steam and GOG. If you have a Dutch bank card, but you're only a few kilometers over in Germany: good luck buying any games.
Re: Why does Google use location for language rather than browser settings?
#113Having moved country twice I used to get very upset by this. Now though, I have just given up on google. They seem to have no interest (and no incentive, for lack of un-buy-out-able competition) to improve this. I mean, apart from the occasional vacation, how much of their userbase are really changing location regularly, right? And do those people have any real choice to opt out of using the shitty product anyhow? Th…
Yeah. Everyone knows better than you what you want. Even the dumb robots.
Re: Why does Google use location for language rather than browser settings?
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Well configured web sites in such countries usually offer a choice of (major) languages on the landing page.
See https://www.apple.com/ch/ (you can also type apple.ch) for an example.
Re: Why does Google use location for language rather than browser settings?
#115The challenge for international platforms/websites are the legal/business requirements per region and it boils down to costs to streamline translations.
Organizations split responsibilities by countries/regions. Local experts get hired to optimize content for their target markets. The back and forth between local subsidiaries/experts with centralized product development teams is more complex, slower and expensive. So you would rather create dedicated customer facing sites per region that are maintained by local teams who take care of location-specific differences (Netflix filtering, Google search results, etc.)
The bigger the org gets the harder a streamlined multi-language (often also multi-currency) business model gets and hence companies opt to geo-location instead of using header lang.
Probably, there are more points, but that’s what I have learned after building an international m-commerce platform that serves users in the EU, US and Mexico
Re: Why does Google use location for language rather than browser settings?
#116A trick-ish that I've learned is to use Irish locale where possible (en-ie) , because that's a combination of English and Metric (the only sane international combination not to go wrong).
Of course this still breaks when software tries location sniffing and puts me $elsewhere.
Re: Why does Google use location for language rather than browser settings?
#117I 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…
I firmly disagree with all of the above. If a site absolutely needs to know where I am in that moment, they can ask me, and I will decide where I am for the purposes of that particular site.
To pick one of a myriad of examples, I often buy software, books, etc. via the web. I don't need sites to assume I want to pay in Euro just because my IP address in that moment happens to be associated with a European IP address block. Paying with my home currency is often much easier. I should not be forced to use a VPN just to avoid this silliness.
I understand where you are coming from, but using IP addresses to determine what "locale" to use is simply not a good practice, and not just for language determination.
Re: Why does Google use location for language rather than browser settings?
#118This "Hey, you are from Ukraine, let us switch you to the Russian language" behavior I see in some places literally causes me PTSD. I got pissed off this way by Adobe just yesterday. Please don't do it people. I don't have the Russian language configured on any of my devices and in any of my accounts (and never had), they do it purely by location.
Re: Why does Google use location for language rather than browser settings?
#119The challenge for international platforms/websites are the legal/business requirements per region and it boils down to costs to streamline translations.
Organizations split responsibilities by countries/regions. Local experts get hired to optimize content for their target markets. The back and forth between local subsidiaries/experts with centralized product development teams is more complex, slower and expensive. So you would rather create dedicated customer facing sites per region that are maintained by local teams who take care of location-specific differences (Netflix filtering, Google search results, etc.)
The bigger the org gets the harder a streamlined multi-language (often also multi-currency) business model gets and hence companies opt to geo-location instead of using header lang.
Probably, there are more points, but that’s what I have learned after building an international m-commerce platform that serves users in the EU, US and Mexico.
It is not a tech issue.
Re: Why does Google use location for language rather than browser settings?
#120I 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…
And they're wrong. I'm in Romania, but I use everything in English. Google is mostly in English, but sometimes decides to switch back to Romanian. Pretty decent , right? Until it decides to switch to Hungarian or German for whatever reason, two languages I have nothing do to with.