4 ms·

Google really loves their geolocation. It's a bit absurd that when I'm signed in to Google, they still try to give me sites in German, Czech or Swedish based on

by Zak 13y ago

Google really loves their geolocation. It's a bit absurd that when I'm signed in to Google, they still try to give me sites in German, Czech or Swedish based on my location when I've expressed my preference for English in my account settings (not to mention the browser's Accept-Language header). I'm guessing here, but I think there might be some correlation between people who travel internationally a lot and people who buy high-end smartphones. Making it difficult for people traveling internationally to buy apps or to buy devices and have them shipped to their homes isn't exactly smart. I used X11 forwarding over SSH to run a browser on my VPS to make sure they let me order my Nexus 5 in the US while I'm in Germany.

znowi 13y ago
Yes, for some reason Accept-Language is totally ignored. It's quite annoying when you travel and suddenly the language changes. The trend to favor geolocation is almost ubiquitous. Few people care about user preferences in the browser, which is the standard way to do it. http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14.4 http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14...
randomhunt 13y ago
Google has always done this, if really always felt like they're so smug they know better than you. I've been complaining about it for well over a decade, and the reason is I travel a lot for business and hit exactly the problems you describe. It was the main impetus to move beyond Google's garden. There is the "ncr" workaround for some of their idiotness but it doesn't always work. I was sad to see Bing copy this cancer "feature" as well a few years ago.
ddeck 13y ago
I'm regularly amazed at how poor Google are at getting this right. Both of the following have occurred to me in the last week alone: 1) Friend and I both have nexus devices, both setup in English with Google accounts signed in, both residing in Hong Kong. Friend creates calendar event and sends invite to to me. I get the invite in GMail entirely in Chinese with no translation links in English. 2) Install app that requires access to Google account services. App opens browser and attempts to get account permission. Google.com shows permission granting page entirely in Chinese with no English links to change language. To make things worse, the Yes / No buttons are both blue, preventing even inferring which one is which. This last case is especially ridiculous. A nexus device, setup in English language, logged into English language Google account, browser on the device logged into Google account, and yet Google.com page displays permissions page in Chinese.
imurray 13y ago
I used X11 forwarding over SSH to run a browser on my VPS Running a browser remotely in that way can be quite painful. Running Firefox locally you can tell it to use a socks proxy on localhost:1080 after connecting to your VPS with "ssh -D 1080". You may also want to set the about:config setting network.proxy.socks_remote_dns to true. Or you could use VPN software, but that's more to setup, and you already have ssh access.
- Zak 13y ago
  Yes, it's a little laggy. I tried Firefox, which was extremely slow, Chromium, which wouldn't run on VZ and finally Arora, which was tolerable. Yours is probably a better way, which I'll keep in mind for the future. The remote browser wouldn't work at all for a highly interactive app or multimedia.
- easytiger 13y ago
  Well that is the wrong thing to do in that situation. Just use ssh -D to set up a socks proxy and use your local browser via your remote VPS. I fail to see how that isn't obvious
  - loudmax 13y ago
    I fail to see how that isn't obvious ssh -D sounds like a good solution to the problem. ssh is a powerful tool with a lot of options that are well worth learning. Many of these options are not, however, "obvious". If you doing anything with UI, I hope you aren't in the mindset that every every feature is obvious.
tazjin 13y ago
Google's services seem to have disconnected language settings or something on their side is just broken. I live in Sweden, have everything set to Swedish but I've also lived in Germany and I have a second Google account (Google Apps work account) which is set to English. Every time I open a page it's like Google randomly picks one (or more) languages out of Swedish, English, German (it /really/ likes German though - also always places me in the middle of Germany when I go to Google Maps) and displays them to me. The worst case I've seen was when they launched the new Google Maps preview and that page header was in Swedish, the body in English and just the button in the middle in German.
gambiting 13y ago
It's not even geolocation, I am in the UK and I still get the message that "google play devices is not available in your country". I need to go into incognito mode to see it. I don't understand why would that be, I've got my google account in English, I've got a UK-based address added to it,as well as a UK-based billing address. I don't understand.
fulafel 13y ago
Ignoring the browser language pref (Accept-Language) to get you to make an account - this annoyance has been there since they started offering different language versions.
- Zak 13y ago
  It also ignores the fact that I'm signed in to my account. There's a separate preference cookie that remembers the language, but it has to be set for each country-specific domain. There's http://google.com/ncr http://google.com/ncr but that doesn't solve the problem across all google services. Buying things is especially problematic.
Al-Khwarizmi 13y ago
That's my biggest gripe with Google. I'm Spanish, but for most of the subjects I typically search for (programming, research, etc.) I prefer to get results in English. I have everything in my Google preferences set to English, but Google insists on prioritizing pages in Spanish. So often I search for an API documentation, for example, and I have to skip through a bunch of incomplete or outdated translations before I find the original English page I was looking for. Some years ago, I used the workaround of going to www.google.co.uk (google.com would still prioritize Spanish, but other regional versions, like co.uk, would show results in their language), but now it no longer works. No matter if I go to the Swedish, German or Chinese versions, and no matter my Google preferences, I still get results in Spanish. Sometimes I even use inferior search engines due to this.
- cycojesus 13y ago
  Have you tried https://google.com/ncr https://google.com/ncr ?

by Zak 13y ago

znowi 13y ago

Yes, for some reason Accept-Language is totally ignored. It's quite annoying when you travel and suddenly the language changes. The trend to favor geolocation is almost ubiquitous. Few people care about user preferences in the browser, which is the standard way to do it. http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14.4 http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14...

randomhunt 13y ago

Google has always done this, if really always felt like they're so smug they know better than you. I've been complaining about it for well over a decade, and the reason is I travel a lot for business and hit exactly the problems you describe. It was the main impetus to move beyond Google's garden. There is the "ncr" workaround for some of their idiotness but it doesn't always work. I was sad to see Bing copy this cancer "feature" as well a few years ago.

ddeck 13y ago

I'm regularly amazed at how poor Google are at getting this right. Both of the following have occurred to me in the last week alone: 1) Friend and I both have nexus devices, both setup in English with Google accounts signed in, both residing in Hong Kong. Friend creates calendar event and sends invite to to me. I get the invite in GMail entirely in Chinese with no translation links in English. 2) Install app that requires access to Google account services. App opens browser and attempts to get account permission. Google.com shows permission granting page entirely in Chinese with no English links to change language. To make things worse, the Yes / No buttons are both blue, preventing even inferring which one is which. This last case is especially ridiculous. A nexus device, setup in English language, logged into English language Google account, browser on the device logged into Google account, and yet Google.com page displays permissions page in Chinese.

imurray 13y ago

I used X11 forwarding over SSH to run a browser on my VPS Running a browser remotely in that way can be quite painful. Running Firefox locally you can tell it to use a socks proxy on localhost:1080 after connecting to your VPS with "ssh -D 1080". You may also want to set the about:config setting network.proxy.socks_remote_dns to true. Or you could use VPN software, but that's more to setup, and you already have ssh access.

Zak 13y ago
Yes, it's a little laggy. I tried Firefox, which was extremely slow, Chromium, which wouldn't run on VZ and finally Arora, which was tolerable. Yours is probably a better way, which I'll keep in mind for the future. The remote browser wouldn't work at all for a highly interactive app or multimedia.
easytiger 13y ago
Well that is the wrong thing to do in that situation. Just use ssh -D to set up a socks proxy and use your local browser via your remote VPS. I fail to see how that isn't obvious
- loudmax 13y ago
  I fail to see how that isn't obvious ssh -D sounds like a good solution to the problem. ssh is a powerful tool with a lot of options that are well worth learning. Many of these options are not, however, "obvious". If you doing anything with UI, I hope you aren't in the mindset that every every feature is obvious.

tazjin 13y ago

Google's services seem to have disconnected language settings or something on their side is just broken. I live in Sweden, have everything set to Swedish but I've also lived in Germany and I have a second Google account (Google Apps work account) which is set to English. Every time I open a page it's like Google randomly picks one (or more) languages out of Swedish, English, German (it /really/ likes German though - also always places me in the middle of Germany when I go to Google Maps) and displays them to me. The worst case I've seen was when they launched the new Google Maps preview and that page header was in Swedish, the body in English and just the button in the middle in German.

gambiting 13y ago

It's not even geolocation, I am in the UK and I still get the message that "google play devices is not available in your country". I need to go into incognito mode to see it. I don't understand why would that be, I've got my google account in English, I've got a UK-based address added to it,as well as a UK-based billing address. I don't understand.

fulafel 13y ago

Ignoring the browser language pref (Accept-Language) to get you to make an account - this annoyance has been there since they started offering different language versions.

Zak 13y ago
It also ignores the fact that I'm signed in to my account. There's a separate preference cookie that remembers the language, but it has to be set for each country-specific domain. There's http://google.com/ncr http://google.com/ncr but that doesn't solve the problem across all google services. Buying things is especially problematic.

Al-Khwarizmi 13y ago

That's my biggest gripe with Google. I'm Spanish, but for most of the subjects I typically search for (programming, research, etc.) I prefer to get results in English. I have everything in my Google preferences set to English, but Google insists on prioritizing pages in Spanish. So often I search for an API documentation, for example, and I have to skip through a bunch of incomplete or outdated translations before I find the original English page I was looking for. Some years ago, I used the workaround of going to www.google.co.uk (google.com would still prioritize Spanish, but other regional versions, like co.uk, would show results in their language), but now it no longer works. No matter if I go to the Swedish, German or Chinese versions, and no matter my Google preferences, I still get results in Spanish. Sometimes I even use inferior search engines due to this.

cycojesus 13y ago
Have you tried https://google.com/ncr https://google.com/ncr ?