I think that's the point. They're using IP geolocation when the article suggests that the Accept-Language header would be a better choice.

I don't know whether this is generally true, but it sounds like it would probably help your situation.

> I think that's the point. They're using IP geolocation when the article suggests that the Accept-Language header would be a better choice.

That was my point :) If I set up us-en everywhere, don't try to be smarter and just show me everything in English.

From my experience, Chrome installs default to en-US without trying to pick up language settings from your computer. (I'm probably doing it wrong)

Not an excuse, but it sounds like they don't trust accept-language to be correct.

Chrome is atrocious. It uses your IP to determine language, even if your OS is another. You can't completely undo it after install; the default search engine is still the country/language you downloaded Chrome from.

Even funnier is when you get Chrome working in the right language, then do a Google search, the results come up in whatever language Google thinks based of IP, then Chrome offers to translate it.

It's so idiotic.

The Play Store is even worse. Some idiot at Google decided that apps with country restrictions should just 404 when you try to access them. So I downloaded an app for my bank. Go travelling. Get security alert update. Try to update? Nope, app not found. Even though it's running on my phone, I can't get to it via Play. Go to the Play website via a proxy and install it? Sure, that works.

I bet if the responsible people were forced to travel or be expats for a bit, this would get coherent quickly.

Try looking at it from the point of view of a Thai guy, who lives in Thailand like most Thai folks do, and who has to put up with all the websites written in English, because webdevs like to assume only Americans access the Internet. Like everyone else, his OS language is set to en-US because nobody likes to mess with system defaults.

Chrome does this guy a huge service by translating a lot of websites to something he can read. So what if it pisses off a few travellers? There are a lot more native Thais in Thailand than there are foreigners.

Why is the Thai guy running Windows/Linux in English?

Why is he on the English website for Chrome in the first place?

I'm in Central America often. When downloading Chrome, I get redirected to the Spanish site. OK, so I explicitly find the English page. Download. So far, everything in English. Then Chrome itself inside the downloader overrides all that and installs in Spanish. The only way to override is to ensure I'm on a proxy.

I'd love to know the statistics of people overriding Google's localized site (forcing google.com in English versus local Google site), overriding the Chrome page (change the URL to have "en" wherever needed), running an OS in English (with no alternative keyboards), that still want it in the language of whatever country they're in.

Not to mention, this falls flat in multilingual countries.

> Like everyone else, his OS language is set to en-US because nobody likes to mess with system defaults.

You mean pirated Windows system defaults? Because legally you buy localized copies, and when you install any popular Linux distro choosing the language is one of first steps if not the first.

It's the same with proper windows. You install and you pick your location and keyboard set up. There will be very very few people in the UK, for example, with en-US windows because the keyboard set up is different (mac's that's another story)

IMO, browsers should pick up your OS language settings by default OR make it very simple to both see what your browser default is and to change it. (without an add on)

I live in the UK, but I'm a US ex-pat so I get snared with i18n problems quite a bit when it comes to addresses on my US accounts.

It gets worse because I forget to change my browser to en-GB, and I come across US run .co.uk sites that rely on accept-languages to assume the format of my postcode. sigh...

Go to http://www.google.com/ncr and it will forward you to the main US version of Google (it will also set your language preference which helps if you find yourself being redirected to the local countries Google domain later).

That doesn't override Chrome's idiotic installer which has the language logic built into the installer itself, so it grabs a localized version off your IP when the downloader runs, regardless of every possible hint to the contrary.

Yeah, I hate this. Can we all agree on just notifying the user of the existence of the localized version of the page in these cases, without explicitly and automatically forcing the localized version on them? I'm pretty sure this can be done elegantly from an UX point of view, and Internet would be a much better place if everyone did this.

Not just anonymous users. Even as a logged-in user with set preferences Google constantly knows better than you which language you want.

"Oh, so you did a local search for hardware stores in insert-country-here? Well, than let's change your default settings to insert-language-here, regardless of what you told us you wanted."

This nightmare grows exponentially if you're in a multilingual country.