Language settings aside, this guy also completely misses the point of how CDNs and localised data centres work, and why it's beneficial to serve localised content rather than constantly dragging Japanese traffic through American data centres.
I'm Not Japanese
71–80 of 129 posts
Re: I'm Not Japanese
#72Actually, this problem also exists for native speakers in their own countries. I'm a German in Germany, yet when I'm searching for technical terms, in the overwhelming majority I want English results because they are better. (The German results are often just blog posts regurgitating what somebody else wrote in English.) It used to be that I could use www.google.de for German searches, and www.google.com/ncr for Engl…
On Google Search: Options -> Search settings -> Languages There you can change the language(s) of your search result. I think you can mark up to 10 languages.
Google provides those settings but it seems to randomly ignore them or at least I can't discern a pattern.
Re: I'm Not Japanese
#73>> Does Google assumes that we live in The Matrix, and you can learn a new country’s language instantly as soon as you move there? >> Google is making the (accurate) calculation that over 99% of people coming from a Japanese IP address whose computer says "Accept-Language: en-gb;q=0.9, en;q=0.7" are actually Japanese speakers of Japanese (true preference: "Accept-Language: ja-jp;q=1.0; en;q=0.000001") whose configura…
Most browsers set the default Accept-Language header correctly. If some IT department screwed it up, it's not the reason to ignore the standards. My HTTP request data should be a priority over my IP address location. And Accept-Language is just that mechanism to set a preferred language for the response.
In all my travels I had to deal with language issues from Google. But it goes beyond that, as the vast majority of i18n'ed sites favor IP location over Accept-Language. I find this trend saddening.
Re: I'm Not Japanese
#74I'm Japanese.
I'm customizing my Chrome's ominibox to use both google.com and google.co.jp. And I'm also configuring amazon, wikipedia, googlemap and so on the same way.
Re: I'm Not Japanese
#75Actually, this problem also exists for native speakers in their own countries. I'm a German in Germany, yet when I'm searching for technical terms, in the overwhelming majority I want English results because they are better. (The German results are often just blog posts regurgitating what somebody else wrote in English.) It used to be that I could use www.google.de for German searches, and www.google.com/ncr for Engl…
To get the U.S. results (for eg.), run the query on google.com (google.com/ncr) and then append "&gl=us" to the URL. For eg. compare :
https://www.google.com/search?q=salem&gl=us
https://www.google.co.in/?q=salem&gl=in
See also : http://www.labnol.org/internet/search/how-to-see-google-resu...
Re: I'm Not Japanese
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Google is making the (accurate) calculation that over 99% of people coming from a Japanese IP address whose computer says "Accept-Language: en-gb;q=0.9, en;q=0.7" are actually Japanese speakers of Japanese Google is making the (completely wrong) assumption that those people cannot type google.co.jp instead of google.com and make their own choices. But at least in Japan they're probably right about the language. Goo…
> Google is making the (completely wrong) assumption that those people cannot type google.co.jp instead of google.com and make their own choices. You're making the completely unsupported assumption that the average internet user understands domain names. Like patio11 suggested, if a user from a Japanese IP is accessing google.com, it's likely that this address was pre-configured in some way: the search bar was set up…
Agreed. Talk to mundane users. You will find out that many of them go to Facebook by typing "www.facebook.com" into Google's search bar.
People don't know the difference between the google search bar and the address bar.
Re: I'm Not Japanese
#77Perhaps deep down you really want to be Japanese though. Google might know you better than you know yourself.
Re: I'm Not Japanese
#78This drives me crazy all the time.
Even my OS and browser are in English and i made search with "English words" ( eg. "operating system" instead of "Betriebssystem" ), search results are in German because i'm in Germany.
At some level it's acceptable but things get weird when i use my girlfriends notebook ( english OS, chinese browser ) : Now google decides to obey "Accept-Language" and even i sign in with my google account, google switch language to Chinese. Since google tries and fails to being "smart" , i have to switch constantly between English, German and Chinese.
Re: I'm Not Japanese
#79At least Google let's you keep a single account. Apple is awful in this regard. The App Store experience is the worst I've ever experienced with regards to this problem. I despise it. I point to it a shining example of how despite all the credit they get, they can fail hard at basic elements of usability.
Re: I'm Not Japanese
#80This drives me crazy when I travel to Korea. I inevitably spend a day or two hunting through preferences to get Google to stop serving me Korean Language pages. Eventually it seems to "stick", but I have to set it back to English at least two or three times.
I never thought about it in terms of personalization, I figured that being in Korea I should be getting Korean pages served to me, and I would have to make the effort to get it back to English.