1213596 - Could adding a keyword for Google Search somehow keep the language the user set in GSearch settings?

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Search, defect)

Description

[msth67]

With the new search UI it isn't possible to add a custom Google search plugin with a different locale than the default one: for instance when using https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?hl=es there is no option in the search box to add this URL as a search engine.

This prevents the creation of (useful) custom searches based on the same search engine using different locales.

Comment 1

[Andrew Truong [:feer56] [:andrewtruong] [:atruong]]

Could you please provide step by step instructions on how to reproduce this issue you're having? Thank you!

Comment 2

[msth67]

It's pretty simple, actually it's almost the same as this other bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1212070: go to the URL https://www.google.co.uk/ (actually, in this case, go to https://www.google.co.uk/ then change the search settings to only display results in spanish https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?hl=es) then try to add this URL as a custom search engine.

You won't see any indication in the search box about adding this search as a new search plugin, i.e. the little + green sign won't show up.

But these are valid search plugins, at least I already have them in older profiles (they were created using the Add to Search Bar addon) and manually dropping such existing .xml plugins inside the searchplugins folder does work, meaning that you will see them at the next restart and they will work as expected.

Comment 3

[YF (Yang)]

I don't see the + icon even on google.com while Google not added, and not found the OpenSearch file. This is Google side issue?

Comment 4

[Florian Quèze [:florian]]

(In reply to YF (Yang) from comment #3)
> I don't see the + icon even on google.com while Google not added, and not
> found the OpenSearch file. This is Google side issue?

Yes, the HTML of the page at google.com doesn't contain a <link rel="search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml"> tag.

Comment 5

[Hallvord R. M. Steen [:hallvors]]

Should we discuss this with Google?

Comment 6

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

So I tried to reproduce the step by step given by msth67

0. With a clean profile on 46.0a1 (2016-01-20) (no addon) on MacOSX
1. I went to https://www.google.co.uk/
2. Click settings on the bottom right.
3. Click Language on the left column.
4. Chose French results and save.

The top URL in the addressbar doesn't change and stays with https://www.google.co.uk/
No specific URL.

I then searched for https://www.google.co.uk/#q=picasso and got the results in French.

The search preferences are probably setup by a cookie.

If I do https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?hl=fr I get the home with a French UI.

In the Firefox UI, there is no "+" sign for the search area. If I do an http Request.

→ http HEAD 'https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?hl=fr'

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Alt-Svc: quic="www.google.com:443"; ma=600; v="30,29,28,27,26,25",quic=":443"; ma=600; v="30,29,28,27,26,25"
Alternate-Protocol: 443:quic,p=1
Cache-Control: private, max-age=0
Content-Encoding: gzip
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2016 01:36:55 GMT
Expires: -1
Link: </?hl=fr>;rel="canonical"
P3P: CP="This is not a P3P policy! See https://www.google.com/support/accounts/answer/151657?hl=en for more info."
Server: gws
Set-Cookie: NID=75=seWUoGjj7HNBISENmKH4IfsC7CRhMDdPV2ZEEXC64SQJwv9bP-kAkr2-SpH_TZr36Cw2Wtps0Ls3qAIfcHQjhntzlCQoIL3J9aHlRrQcd5Qh-2lSKzjXQ6FrdPEazOEs; expires=Tue, 26-Jul-2016 01:36:55 GMT; path=/; domain=.google.co.uk; HttpOnly
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN
X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block


The canonical link for this is /?hl=fr so at least webhp is not necessary.

Amazon removed the Opensearch link.
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/OnTheImportanceOfOpenSearch.aspx

I guess Google made the business decision to remove it too. I can't find a reference on the Web for this decision.

Comment 7

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

I contacted Google today to know if it was an executive decision or not.

Comment 8

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

Google didn't find (yet) anything about that internally.
They probably decided to remove it.

Comment 9

[Firefox Bug Husbandry Bot]

See bug 1547409. Moving webcompat whiteboard tags to keywords.

Comment 10

[Oana Arbuzov [:oanaarbuzov]]

The issue is still reproducible.
https://prnt.sc/EyE46n34Eazg

Tested with:
Browser / Version: Firefox Nightly 101.0a1 (2022-04-05)
Operating System: Windows 10 Pro

Comment 11

[Raul Bucata]

was able to reproduce the issue.

Tested with:

Browser / Version: Firefox Release 108.0.2 (64-bit)/ Firefox Nightly 110.0a1 (2023-01-12) (64-bit) / Chrome Version 109.0.5414.75 (Official Build) (64-bit)
Operating System: Windows 10 PRO x64

Notes:

1. Reproducible regardless of the status of ETP.
2. Reproducible on the latest build of Firefox Nightly and Release.
3. Works as expected using Chrome.

Comment 12

[Thomas Wisniewski [:twisniewski]]

This doesn't really seem like a webcompat issue to me, as even in Chrome one has to manually add a search engine keyword by URL. This strikes as just an unfortunate product decision by Google which makes it harder to get those URLs, and breaks the Firefox "add as a keyword" option. I also don't see any cookies or other obvious way the keyword search could know which language the user has selected (to generate the right custom URL for the user at the time they right-click on the search bar), so I suspect we may be stuck. But let's move this to the search component just in case, with the note that the steps to reproduce are in comment #6.

Comment 13

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Having taken a look at this, it sounds like the request is for the search engines to be available to be added via a mechanism know as "OpenSearch" - in this case that mechanism is controlled by the website, and we are not able to do anything in Firefox.

An alternative here would be to setup bookmarks with keywords, which would have the end result of the same intention.