11 ms·

>> 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 (acc

by patio11 14y ago

>> 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 configurations have been borked at the manufacturer or the IT department level, and who will be terribly served by content written in English. It's an act of charity that they even ask about English prior to defaulting you into Japanese. (They haven't always done that -- every year or two it seems to switch for me.) This is a particularly acute issue since most users of Google don't actually have accounts on it, their best attempts to fix that to the contrary. As a result, in key ways such as language, the service needs to "just work" for the majority of their users. Also, if I was to have a totally clinical view of the situation, the expected value of 1 English speaker in terms of ad clicks is ridiculously below the expected value of 1 Japanese speaker in terms of ad clicks, given that both are in Japan (+), and you're asking to sacrifice 99 Japanese speakers to save the 1 English speaker. Once you accept that there will be a loser in this decision either way, figuring out who the loser should be is not that hard. Sorry: I'd prefer English, too. >> And by the way, want to check out a post on Blogspot? Off to blogspot.jp you go. This doesn’t change the page itself, only the URL. So what does redirecting me accomplish, except make me feel that I’m not in control of what sites I can access? >> This is a hack around censorship laws in a few places (most relevantly to the instant case, Germany, I believe). Google has a blogspot.jp which is a copy of .com which is a copy of .de which is a copy of... except that they enforce country-specific censorship laws. This was deemed an acceptable tradeoff versus getting all of blogspot blacklisted in e.g. Germany. n.b. No special inside knowledge here. (+) If this is not intuitively obvious to you talk to me about AdWords geotargetting and default settings sometime.

sgdesign 14y ago
I agree with you for logged out users, but these things happen even when you are logged in.
zalew 14y ago
> This is a hack around censorship laws in a few places (most relevantly to the instant case, Germany, I believe). Google has a blogspot.jp which is a copy of .com which is a copy of .de which is a copy of... except that they enforce country-specific censorship laws. This was deemed an acceptable tradeoff versus getting all of blogspot blacklisted in e.g. Germany. what event/law are you referring to? why blogspot should be censored in germany?
- patio11 14y ago
  Germany has many laws which are different that e.g. the USA. In particular, in the US certain sentiments which are politically and socially radioactive are protected by the US Constitution and the laws, traditions, and expectations of the American polity. Germany is similar in some regards but there is one particular politically and socially radioactive statement you could make -- support for the Nazi Party -- which, owing to the laws, traditions, and expectations of the Germany polity, will result in the government coming down on you like a ton of bricks.
  - zalew 14y ago
    I know Germany and many other countries in Europe are more sensitive about promoting extreme viewpoints. My question was more about something specific related to censoring blogspot, and how the domain redirects are used to bypass that. I mean, how does it matter what domain is used to display the same content? OP says he's redirected to blogspot.jp - what problems does it solve for Google?
    - jgeralnik 14y ago
      Presumably articles that need to be censored in Germany would be censored on blogspot.de and not on blogspot.com, so Germans are redirected.
    - DanBC 14y ago
      > * how does it matter what domain is used to display the same content?* It only displays the same content if that content is compliant for the local region. Thus, in the Nazi example, all off blogspot get the posts except blogspot.de, who filter it out somehow. That's something that Youtube doesn't do with adverts very well - I'm in the UK, I've not left the UK, my IP geolocates to the UK, but I often get US ads in Youtube. Advertising law is different and often the ads are not compliant for the UK.
davidw 14y ago
I am logged on to Google, and they know I want English results and an English interface, because I've gone through and done all the settings. And yet, occasionally something goes wonky and they start showing me the interface in Italian again. I have no problems if their default is the local language - that's pretty much a no-brainer - but when I've told them in no uncertain terms what my own preferences are, they ought to respect that.
- hessenwolf 14y ago
  It randomly flicks in and out of German for me all the time (I live in Germany). I have ravaged the settings to change this, but to little effect. At least I am gradually getting better at German!
- Jacobi 14y ago
  For me sometimes it switches to Arabic even if I set the settings. And here in north Africa most people are francophone and prefer French or English !
- cocojumbo123 14y ago
  Same here. I travel a lot and use VPN to access the corporate network. So if I am in the Chinese office google goes Chinese (and it takes some random guessing to switch the language back to English) then in the hotel (via VPN) it promptly goes German. One small improvement would be to write the name of the language in the original and not in whatever country's version. (e.g. English instead of Angol, etc).
- MagerValp 14y ago
  For some reason I tend to get Google's authentication pages in Hungarian (at least I think that's what it is), despite being in Sweden with sv_SE/sv/en_US/en configured in the browser and Google's services set to use English. Fun!
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
JohnsonB 14y ago
>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 From the article: >The problem is compounded by the fact that most of the time, you have no way of doing anything about it. And when you can do something, it’s often buried in layers of menus, which –don’t forget– are all in Japanese, Bhutanese, or Martian… I think you're missing a key point in the article.
- chc 14y ago
  This is only a problem for those who: 1. Are in the tiny minority of people in Japan who don't speak Japanese AND 2. Chose to switch to Japanese when Google asked them if they'd prefer Google in Japanese or English Google guessing that she might have been Japanese was not the major problem here. The ultimate problem was her incorrectly stating her language preference. It's hard to see what reasonable measures Google could have taken to inconvenience fewer people here.
  - JohnsonB 14y ago
    Actually, it's a problem for anyone who speaks a language that is different from the official language of the country they are in, and don't have a Google account (a lot of people.) In any case, a persistent language menu on all Google properties that has all languages available would solve either and all other problems associated with language choice.
rickmb 14y ago
> 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. Google pulls the same crap in multilingual countries, and gets it wrong a lot of the time. This isn't Google being smart, this is Google being lazy and insensitive.
- ktizo 14y ago
  It asked her if she wanted Japanese and she clicked yes and it gave her Japanese. What crap do you think anyone is pulling here? Also, if in Japan, I would be surprised to find google.com not to be in Japanese, and I would expect to have to perhaps make some kind of preparations for the fact that the majority of the world does not speak my language and that my electronic devices and services are not universal metatrons run by omnipresent deitys either.
  - briandear 14y ago
    Yes, but google.co.jp does just fine. The automatic country redirects are the main issue. I wouldn't go to Microsoft.com and expect it to be in Chinese any more than if I went to Baidu.cn and expected it to be in English. The country domain is the ideal way to handle regional preference, I don't need the software doing it for me. I'm not an idiot, stop treating me like one.
    - aptwebapps 14y ago
      Yes, but you're going to run into the problem that patio11 pointed out. You are in a tiny minority and they don't want to inconvenience the vast majority just because your preference is 'better'.
    - tommi 14y ago
      Country domain is the worst way to handle language preference. We already have a perfectly valid way to handle language preference with Accept-Language. There is no need to register domain under every possible country domain you could localize. And countries do not equal languages. Bilingual countries would be screwed if country domains were the only option.
znowi 14y ago
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.
- freehunter 14y ago
  Yeah, if an IT department messed up, call the helpdesk and complain. The setting will either be fixed or support should be able to get you through the menus to correct the setting on your own.
kulkarnic 14y ago
This is not entirely so. When I visited Japan, my browser prompted "We've detected you've moved to Japan, would you like to change..." That to me seems wrong. No one learns a language in 7 hours.
- dllthomas 14y ago
  But many people learn a language before going to a country, and some portion of those will want to use it because switching back and forth between languages can be hard. I don't think it's a bad question to ask, at all.
- illuminate 14y ago
  "would you like to change..." That to me seems wrong" You're getting offended because a portal asked you a question? Really?
- jarek 14y ago
  You could speak both and prefer to use the Japanese version when in Japan (to get better local results, for instance). The site has no way of knowing your particular situation, so they ask rather than defaulting to one or the other.
cpach 14y ago
»This is a hack around censorship laws in a few places« Wow, I had no idea. I thought it was some obnoxius kind of load-balancing or something like that :)

by patio11 14y ago

sgdesign 14y ago

I agree with you for logged out users, but these things happen even when you are logged in.

zalew 14y ago

> This is a hack around censorship laws in a few places (most relevantly to the instant case, Germany, I believe). Google has a blogspot.jp which is a copy of .com which is a copy of .de which is a copy of... except that they enforce country-specific censorship laws. This was deemed an acceptable tradeoff versus getting all of blogspot blacklisted in e.g. Germany. what event/law are you referring to? why blogspot should be censored in germany?

patio11 14y ago
Germany has many laws which are different that e.g. the USA. In particular, in the US certain sentiments which are politically and socially radioactive are protected by the US Constitution and the laws, traditions, and expectations of the American polity. Germany is similar in some regards but there is one particular politically and socially radioactive statement you could make -- support for the Nazi Party -- which, owing to the laws, traditions, and expectations of the Germany polity, will result in the government coming down on you like a ton of bricks.
- zalew 14y ago
  I know Germany and many other countries in Europe are more sensitive about promoting extreme viewpoints. My question was more about something specific related to censoring blogspot, and how the domain redirects are used to bypass that. I mean, how does it matter what domain is used to display the same content? OP says he's redirected to blogspot.jp - what problems does it solve for Google?
  - jgeralnik 14y ago
    Presumably articles that need to be censored in Germany would be censored on blogspot.de and not on blogspot.com, so Germans are redirected.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    > * how does it matter what domain is used to display the same content?* It only displays the same content if that content is compliant for the local region. Thus, in the Nazi example, all off blogspot get the posts except blogspot.de, who filter it out somehow. That's something that Youtube doesn't do with adverts very well - I'm in the UK, I've not left the UK, my IP geolocates to the UK, but I often get US ads in Youtube. Advertising law is different and often the ads are not compliant for the UK.

davidw 14y ago

I am logged on to Google, and they know I want English results and an English interface, because I've gone through and done all the settings. And yet, occasionally something goes wonky and they start showing me the interface in Italian again. I have no problems if their default is the local language - that's pretty much a no-brainer - but when I've told them in no uncertain terms what my own preferences are, they ought to respect that.

hessenwolf 14y ago
It randomly flicks in and out of German for me all the time (I live in Germany). I have ravaged the settings to change this, but to little effect. At least I am gradually getting better at German!
Jacobi 14y ago
For me sometimes it switches to Arabic even if I set the settings. And here in north Africa most people are francophone and prefer French or English !
cocojumbo123 14y ago
Same here. I travel a lot and use VPN to access the corporate network. So if I am in the Chinese office google goes Chinese (and it takes some random guessing to switch the language back to English) then in the hotel (via VPN) it promptly goes German. One small improvement would be to write the name of the language in the original and not in whatever country's version. (e.g. English instead of Angol, etc).
MagerValp 14y ago
For some reason I tend to get Google's authentication pages in Hungarian (at least I think that's what it is), despite being in Sweden with sv_SE/sv/en_US/en configured in the browser and Google's services set to use English. Fun!
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

JohnsonB 14y ago

>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 From the article: >The problem is compounded by the fact that most of the time, you have no way of doing anything about it. And when you can do something, it’s often buried in layers of menus, which –don’t forget– are all in Japanese, Bhutanese, or Martian… I think you're missing a key point in the article.

chc 14y ago
This is only a problem for those who: 1. Are in the tiny minority of people in Japan who don't speak Japanese AND 2. Chose to switch to Japanese when Google asked them if they'd prefer Google in Japanese or English Google guessing that she might have been Japanese was not the major problem here. The ultimate problem was her incorrectly stating her language preference. It's hard to see what reasonable measures Google could have taken to inconvenience fewer people here.
- JohnsonB 14y ago
  Actually, it's a problem for anyone who speaks a language that is different from the official language of the country they are in, and don't have a Google account (a lot of people.) In any case, a persistent language menu on all Google properties that has all languages available would solve either and all other problems associated with language choice.

rickmb 14y ago

> 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. Google pulls the same crap in multilingual countries, and gets it wrong a lot of the time. This isn't Google being smart, this is Google being lazy and insensitive.

ktizo 14y ago
It asked her if she wanted Japanese and she clicked yes and it gave her Japanese. What crap do you think anyone is pulling here? Also, if in Japan, I would be surprised to find google.com not to be in Japanese, and I would expect to have to perhaps make some kind of preparations for the fact that the majority of the world does not speak my language and that my electronic devices and services are not universal metatrons run by omnipresent deitys either.
- briandear 14y ago
  Yes, but google.co.jp does just fine. The automatic country redirects are the main issue. I wouldn't go to Microsoft.com and expect it to be in Chinese any more than if I went to Baidu.cn and expected it to be in English. The country domain is the ideal way to handle regional preference, I don't need the software doing it for me. I'm not an idiot, stop treating me like one.
  - aptwebapps 14y ago
    Yes, but you're going to run into the problem that patio11 pointed out. You are in a tiny minority and they don't want to inconvenience the vast majority just because your preference is 'better'.
  - tommi 14y ago
    Country domain is the worst way to handle language preference. We already have a perfectly valid way to handle language preference with Accept-Language. There is no need to register domain under every possible country domain you could localize. And countries do not equal languages. Bilingual countries would be screwed if country domains were the only option.

znowi 14y ago

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.

freehunter 14y ago
Yeah, if an IT department messed up, call the helpdesk and complain. The setting will either be fixed or support should be able to get you through the menus to correct the setting on your own.

kulkarnic 14y ago

This is not entirely so. When I visited Japan, my browser prompted "We've detected you've moved to Japan, would you like to change..." That to me seems wrong. No one learns a language in 7 hours.

dllthomas 14y ago
But many people learn a language before going to a country, and some portion of those will want to use it because switching back and forth between languages can be hard. I don't think it's a bad question to ask, at all.
illuminate 14y ago
"would you like to change..." That to me seems wrong" You're getting offended because a portal asked you a question? Really?
jarek 14y ago
You could speak both and prefer to use the Japanese version when in Japan (to get better local results, for instance). The site has no way of knowing your particular situation, so they ask rather than defaulting to one or the other.

cpach 14y ago

»This is a hack around censorship laws in a few places« Wow, I had no idea. I thought it was some obnoxius kind of load-balancing or something like that :)