> Google is making the (completely wrong) assumption that those people cannot type google.co.jp instead of google.com and make their own choices.

You're making the completely unsupported assumption that the average internet user understands domain names. Like patio11 suggested, if a user from a Japanese IP is accessing google.com, it's likely that this address was pre-configured in some way: the search bar was set up like that, or the company sysadmin set up the home page like that. But even if the user manually typed "google.com", if they're in Japan it's still (way) more likely that they wanted a Japanese version rather than the English one.

Come on, most users outside the US are perfectly used to a plethora of international TLD's. It's something they are quite familiar with.

Also, they either use the English version of the OS and browser, or the one in their language, and both come with the default correct preferred language settings.

The same goes for company systems. You don't give someone who can't handle English an English language system, and the idea of setting up a system in language X but pre-configuring that in some what that English becomes the preferred browser language is a really odd edge case.

Even if such scenarios are more common, it still doesn't excuse telling people that make explicit choices to go fuck themselves, especially in multi-lingual countries where such explicit choices are common.

Japan may be relatively homogenous, but most countries in Europe are either formally multilingual or have large immigrant populations. Many thousands of people are regularly being confronted with misplaced assumptions about their preferred language.

You can't assume language from geo-IP databases, it is the most unreliable and inappropriate method imaginable, and you are 100% sure to regularly piss people off.

What method is more reliable than guessing the language based on the IP address?

Ask the user, remember preference. Possibly Accept-Language (note - not locale, as locale != language). But, ask the user.

That's kind of orthogonal to how you guess the user's language. It is, in fact, what Google is doing.

Agreed. Talk to mundane users. You will find out that many of them go to Facebook by typing "www.facebook.com" into Google's search bar.

People don't know the difference between the google search bar and the address bar.

Google isn't being lazy & insensitive. I18N is hard.

> I18N is hard.

Understatement.

Shouldn't US users then be using google.us, and uk users use google.co.uk and should google.com just redirect to the language of the location of the user?

Yes. But google.us acts the same as google.com when it comes to location redirects though (e.g., I have a Canadian IP and en-us;0.9 Accept-Language, it redirects me to google.ca).

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.

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.

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.

Why is it the worst way to handle language preference?

If you are a local you are probably very used to your country domain, it is probably on par with .com.

Now the Accept-Language is quite subtle and guess how that is set up in an internet café? Can you even change it? Will the next customer be happy about that? I'd be mighty impressed if more than 1% of the people that surfs the web has a clue about Accept-Language.

Also, if one asks for a local country domain that really should be the localized version, sometimes I actually want to use google for a language different other than my own.

If I for instance wanted to search in English on something that has a similar wording as Swedish I'd like to go to google.com in order to quickly get rid of the Swedish-bias (since that doesn't work I sometimes use google.co.uk instead).

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'.

>I'm not an idiot, stop treating me like one.

Many people are however, and mass media, which includes Google, however they may try to deny it, lives by the numbers, which means adapting to the lowest common denominator. Just think, as the Internet spreads, Google will evolve (devolve) closer and closer to broadcast TV!

If I was in China and looked at microsoft.com, I would think they were absolute idiots if it didn't default to Chinese. If you don't localise for all your major territories from your .com domain and force them to use a country domain instead, then you should shoot your marketing director immediately.