Ask HN: Why does Google force country redirects?

In the old days, you could use the google.com/ncr "trick" to avoid being redirected to a local version of Google. That stopped working long ago. Why do companies insist on redirecting to local versions of sites based on IP address geolocation? If a user wanted google.fr, shouldn't that be what they type? If they want google.com, shouldn't that be respected? Why does "the web" (meaning a large number of websites) attempt to infer both your location as well as what you want? google.com reflects a user's intent of going to google.com, while google.fr respects a users intent to go to the French "version" of Google. For example, searching for "4x4 mountain lodges California" from google.com, while located in France, provides a tripadvisor.fr result at the top. Even though I might physically be in France, that's irrelevant to my search query -- unless my search query were in French, then it would be more relevant than a tripadvisor.com result. Why do companies like Google ignore the user's intent -- and why we tolerate that? For Apple's iTunes Store, as a counter example, I can switch to whatever store matches a billing credit card address, which is fair enough. But with Google, it seems that you are being actively blocked from searching how you might want to search. "Use in English" or "Use Google.com" doesn't solve the issue, because the search results are still using location. Even Duck Duck Go infers your location from your IP. "The search engine that doesn't track you." That might be true, but it's still using geolocation, which, to me still feels like an violation of both user intent as well as privacy. Just as a street address represents a specific, exact place, shouldn't web addresses? If I call the US phone number for Marriott, they don't answer the phone in French because I might be calling from there. So why the hell do websites do that? Why did we let the web get so broken?