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Google changes the UI language in its first party apps based on IP, which is a much bigger deal than advertisers chosing to send Spanish ads to people who spen

by lupire 4y ago

Google changes the UI language in its first party apps based on IP, which is a much bigger deal than advertisers chosing to send Spanish ads to people who spend time in Spanish language countries.

realusername 4y ago
They still haven't understood that there's multilingual countries and immigration is a thing, I wonder how long it's going to take then to fix this annoying bug, this issue has been there forever.
- jen20 4y ago
  Indeed - one of the more annoying things for me is Google and friends giving me UK-centric results because my browser language is set to en-GB despite being logged in, with a US billing address and a US IP address. United Airlines is actually the worst offender for this - they constantly revert pricing to GBP. They somehow manage to know which home airport to set though.
lucb1e 4y ago
Not just that, I also constantly get German Wikipedia articles as top result when my browser and OS are set to English. If it were only the UI, that would be better because I know the buttons by heart already (not a given for every user, of course). I've always wondered what I'm supposed to do when on holiday in a country with a different script that I can't make heads or tails of. I'll have to practice my japanese or amharic then I guess? The other extreme is DDG which will try to find English results for a query that very clearly uses Dutch words, matching pages that don't have those words on them rather than bringing up the Dutch page that contains all of the keywords.
- fsflover 4y ago
  With DDG, you can switch the location slider on, and it seems to use your IP then.
  - lucb1e 4y ago
    Yep, so I have to tap the language menu, tap the search field, type ger, select Germany... whereas it could just do keyword matching like I ask it to
    - fsflover 4y ago
      You can preselect all these by using the correct link (look at the help section).
- andreareina 4y ago
  I believe if you're logged in it will miraculously know what language to use. Mind you I don't actually know because I stay logged out
  - Akronymus 4y ago
    It doesn't. For me, it still puts the local language results first.
humanistbot 4y ago
You can disable this by going to https://www.google.com/preferences https://www.google.com/preferences and changing "Region Settings" to your home country. The fact that this is so undocumented, not easily accessible from first-party apps, and yet lives at such a simple URL is baffling to me. Edit: It only works if you stay logged in to your Google account.
- kps 4y ago
  Doesn't help. My ISP covers Ontario and Québec with the same address pools — two different ‘primary’ languages, not to mention two different legal jurisdictions. IP ‘geolocation’ is fundamentally broken. With Firefox, you can (with some difficulty) specify your location, but most still pull something out of their ass.

by lupire 4y ago

Google changes the UI language in its first party apps based on IP, which is a much bigger deal than advertisers chosing to send Spanish ads to people who spend time in Spanish language countries.

realusername 4y ago

They still haven't understood that there's multilingual countries and immigration is a thing, I wonder how long it's going to take then to fix this annoying bug, this issue has been there forever.

jen20 4y ago
Indeed - one of the more annoying things for me is Google and friends giving me UK-centric results because my browser language is set to en-GB despite being logged in, with a US billing address and a US IP address. United Airlines is actually the worst offender for this - they constantly revert pricing to GBP. They somehow manage to know which home airport to set though.

lucb1e 4y ago

Not just that, I also constantly get German Wikipedia articles as top result when my browser and OS are set to English. If it were only the UI, that would be better because I know the buttons by heart already (not a given for every user, of course). I've always wondered what I'm supposed to do when on holiday in a country with a different script that I can't make heads or tails of. I'll have to practice my japanese or amharic then I guess? The other extreme is DDG which will try to find English results for a query that very clearly uses Dutch words, matching pages that don't have those words on them rather than bringing up the Dutch page that contains all of the keywords.

fsflover 4y ago
With DDG, you can switch the location slider on, and it seems to use your IP then.
- lucb1e 4y ago
  Yep, so I have to tap the language menu, tap the search field, type ger, select Germany... whereas it could just do keyword matching like I ask it to
  - fsflover 4y ago
    You can preselect all these by using the correct link (look at the help section).
andreareina 4y ago
I believe if you're logged in it will miraculously know what language to use. Mind you I don't actually know because I stay logged out
- Akronymus 4y ago
  It doesn't. For me, it still puts the local language results first.

humanistbot 4y ago

You can disable this by going to https://www.google.com/preferences https://www.google.com/preferences and changing "Region Settings" to your home country. The fact that this is so undocumented, not easily accessible from first-party apps, and yet lives at such a simple URL is baffling to me. Edit: It only works if you stay logged in to your Google account.

kps 4y ago
Doesn't help. My ISP covers Ontario and Québec with the same address pools — two different ‘primary’ languages, not to mention two different legal jurisdictions. IP ‘geolocation’ is fundamentally broken. With Firefox, you can (with some difficulty) specify your location, but most still pull something out of their ass.