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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?

#261

Post by traspler »

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.

Hey, I had the same issue and variations of it (french category titles, german content and english menus). Also Swiss German with English setup. I actually managed to solve it with some unintuitive language settings.

// Edit:

Okay so the issue can be resolved as follows (Windows 10): Windows Settings -> Time & Language -> Language -> Preferred Languages -> Order it so that "English (United States)" is at the top

I previsouly had "English (Switzerland)" at the top. This order influences the "Apps & websites" setting at the top there.

With "English (Switzerland)" my section headings in the Store were French, e.g. "Films et TV" but with "English (United States)" at the top I get "Movies & TV". Of course the section headings, callouts, etc. otherwise are still a mixture of your MS Store region (German in my case) and the Windows display language (English in my case).

Why "English (Switzerland)" would result in French... I don't know.

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

#262

Post by [deleted] »

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.…

[deleted]

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

#263

Post by traspler »

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.…

I am Swiss German and living in Switzerland (German speaking part) and I had the weirdest issue for a couple of years: Swiss, the airline, always gave me french boarding passes. But all my settings were either set to English or German. The bizarre part was that if I booked for multiple people they would all get english ones except for me. Similar things sometimes happen for other services. Sometimes Switzerland means French for some services and all my settings on any level do not help.

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

#264

Post by Fiahil »

S0und wrote: post #234
Fiahil wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in France, speak French, but work with English as my primary language. So, I had to make the same settings change, otherwise google would keep putting French searches before English ones (despite the fact that I searched with English keywords). I don't remember how I found this, but it might something along the lines of "I'm really annoyed today, let's fix this NOW". When you speak 2 languages or more, and the…

This is why I think Google assistant is absolutely useless. Try to call someone who has a name in X language on a device that is set to English. You just can't. I love Big tech circle jerk about diversity, that somehow stops at skincolor, gender and sexual identity. You happens to bilingual? Sorry our cutting edge AI can't handle that. Google all I want is a command for assistant, for example "OK Google, Call *in ger…

> Google all I want is a command for assistant, for example "OK Google, Call in german/dutch/French/etc . See, it's not that hard.

I had the exact same idea, it seems Google really lack good product design.

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

#265

Post by slig »

antematerija wrote: post #241

You can set language to be anything you want regardless of location. E.g. on mobile just scroll to bottom of fist page and pick different language. E.g. on desktop just go to settings and pick language. I'm pretty sure this works awesome since I've used this all my life. I would expect power users to look for simple solution instead of ranting. Who the hell are you guys if you can't find language settings!!!

It doesn't work. That's the point.

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

#266

Post by etchalon »

This is super non-interesting.

But every jurisdiction has unique laws, company policies, release schedules, etc.

So, for every jurisdiction, you have unique official text.

The unique official text will always be available in the majority languages of the jurisdiction. The people who work in the jurisdiction speak it, and write in it, and can easily generate it.

Non-majority languages require translators. Hiring people. Workflows. Approvals, etc.

So it's easier to go off location, because then I know you're reading the right official text, and if you can't read the official text in the native language, it's on you to translate.

This gets harder the bigger the company, especially in cases where the "company" is a bunch of independent subsidiaries.

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

#267

Post by antematerija »

slig wrote: post #265
antematerija wrote: post #241

You can set language to be anything you want regardless of location. E.g. on mobile just scroll to bottom of fist page and pick different language. E.g. on desktop just go to settings and pick language. I'm pretty sure this works awesome since I've used this all my life. I would expect power users to look for simple solution instead of ranting. Who the hell are you guys if you can't find language settings!!!

It doesn't work. That's the point.

It does work. I use this my entire life.

Please read my comment. I'm talking about language settings on Google and not browser settings.

Somehow people believe that a multi trillion dollar company hasn't ran live experiments on this.

The default settings are adapted so the probability of correct language for people who can't find language settings is maximized.

Guys, please use common sense. The alternative is to believe that Google engineers are either not educated or don't know ab testing.

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

#268

Post by tut-urut-utut »

SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #246
liotier wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

French native speaker here. UX consistency, shared Internet culture, habits from the early 90's and error messages I can actually find on the Web are the reasons why I always set my computing to the english language. I'm trying to have English language but metric units, 24 hour clock and ISO dates... Seldom can I achieve that. On the French-language mandatory corporate Windows laptop, Excel formulas are translated in…

I just have a custom locale for any UNIX-like systems I use. American English, UTF-8, 24-hour time, RFC-3339 dates, SI units, '.' decimal point, '_' thousands separator. I call it en_ENG, for the fictional land of Engineeristan.

Mind to share your LC_ settings?

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

#269

Post by richardfey »

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…

> Google is the most prominent offender. If I’m signed in to my browser profile in Chrome, the search engine is served in English. No problem. The moment I try to access it from incognito, or Firefox, however, I get the Spanish language version of Google.

What if it's a dark pattern to have more people signed in?

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

#270

Post by tut-urut-utut »

CaptainZapp wrote: post #114
overkalix wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It gives me a choice to choose between French and German. Where’s Italian?

Apple is rarely a good example of giving user a choice.

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