272586 - Wrong l10n of startpage in multiple-languages speaking countries

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 269062

(www.mozilla.org :: General, defect)

Description

[Xavier Robin]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; fr-FR; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041108 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; fr-FR; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041108 Firefox/1.0

Redirection of the start page to google/firefox are made depending on the countries.

This causes problem in countries where google is available in more than one
language (ex : Switzerland, Belgium, Canada...). For exemple in Switzerland,
google is by default in german. It means that for french- or italian-speaking,
the first page seen in Firefox is a german page. Not a very good first-effect.

Google only allow to change the language on its front page, not in the firefox
page. That means that it is not possible to quickly change the language.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
Click on the link :
http://start.mozilla.org/firefox?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:fr-FR:official

Depending on your country, you are redirected to google/firefox
Actual Results:  
For me it comes to the following page :
http://www.google.ch/firefox?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:fr-FR:official.
The page is yet in french because I have a cookie stored.

On a new profile or if cookies are not stored, I come on a german page.

Expected Results:  
Come in google/firefox in french.

As soon as google doesn't allow to define the language trough the URL or the
Accept-language HTTP header, the easyest way to fix this is not to redirect to
ambiguous countries.

For exemple, redirect to google.fr if you find "fr-FR" in the URL.

Comment 1

[Benoit]

This problem occurs as well in Belgium. 

On the first launch of a French-speaking Firefox, the start page appears in
Dutch, and one has to load "google.be" and choose "display this site in French".

I disagree with a redirection to google.fr for all users having fr-FR in their
useragent. For example, users from Belgium, Canada or Switzerland would lose the
checkbox "search in pages located in this country only" in the search results.

The right solution is IMHO either:
- To add language switching links as seen on the homepages of
http://www.google.be , http://www.google.ch/ or http://www.google.ca/ on the
Firefox start page too
- To catch the "fr-FR" in the parameters (rls=org.mozilla:fr-FR:official) and
switching the google interface accordingly (but not the domain).

(As the page is managed by Google, not sure where this bug should go... it could
be a marketing issue or something)

Comment 2

[Benoit]

Related (maybe dupe or dependency) : bug #269354

Comment 3

[Peter Van der Beken [:peterv]]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 269062 ***

Comment 4

[Reed Loden [:reed]]

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