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by wutbrodo 1554 days ago
Google has literally billions of users. There are people who are worse at using computers than anyone you've ever met.

I'm as irritated as anyone when something doesn't cater to "power users". But if we're trying to understand the reason behind the decision instead of just venting, then it's instructive to consider just how computer-illiterate the non-power-user is for a product as massive as Google Search, and how annoying characteristics may be a consequence of trying to satisfy both you and them.
2 comments
mcv 1554 days ago
This isn't about power users. This will affect anyone who finds themselves in a country with a different language. Migrants, expats, refugees, people on vacation, people living in a country with multiple official languages; there are a lot of people for whom Google's way of handling this will give bad results. And it gives bad results in a way the user can't fix. If Google listened to the language settings, the user would have some control over it.
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unreal37 1554 days ago
It's a setting that you can't change. You can't override it. You can't say "yes I'm really really really sure I want Google to always be in English."

It's beyond nuts. And "catering to the computer illiterate" can't be the explanation.

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netsharc 1554 days ago
At least for google.com, you can use google.com/ncr to get it[1] in English (just tested in incognito mode from a non-English location).

[1] it = the front page. No guarantees that it'll work for other parts or other Google sites like Google Maps[2]. I remember noticing years ago that even with the /ncr, when the front page had a doodle, mousing over it still showed the tooltip in the local language. Billions of dollars, and can't even program a website.

[2] Yeah it still gives me my local currency for hotels in Google Maps. I live in country A, I was visiting country B, and I needed to find a hotel in my home country A. I was logged in. Google knows my address and that my account is tied to Country A (because... Play Store region locking for content, blah blah), but it still showed me the hotel prices for the country I live in and was looking for hotels in, in the foreign currency of the place I was currently sitting at. Fuck you very much, Google!

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dagw 1554 days ago
you can use google.com/ncr to get it[1] in English

I just tried, and while the page is in English, the top search results it returned are localized results to the country I happen to live in.

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