286554 - Firefox Start goes to wrong language

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 269062

(Firefox :: Settings UI, defect)

Description

[Kim Davies]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050225 Firefox/1.0.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050225 Firefox/1.0.1

Fresh install of Firefox 1.0.1, with the "Firefox Start" page as home: 
http://start.mozilla.org/firefox?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official 
diverts to this address: 
http://www.google.be/firefox?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official

The page shows in Dutch, even though all OS and Firefox preferences are for
English. Unlike www.google.be, start page provides no option to change language
either. 

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install Firefox with all default
2. Start browser (nominally from a Belgian IP address)
Actual Results:  
Dutch start page, despite no Dutch settings at all on the PC.

Expected Results:  
English start page. en-US is the default language preference as coded into the URL.

Comment 1

[Jo Hermans]

Reporter, this page is served by Google, and they use cookies to remember your
favorite language (you can also set them). If these are missing, it will try to
guess from your ip-address. That's what happened here.

Comment 2

[Kim Davies]

Understood. There is no cookie, but I don't think the correct behaviour
should be to guess when the browser clearly knows better (i.e. is passing
the correct language preference in the URL). I don't believe it is a bug in the
Mozilla code itself, but I don't know how else to report it, as I do 
believe it is a bug in the whole process.

Comment 3

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

google.com will always redirect to the "local" version, based actually on IP, if
I understand this properly.  This isn't limited to .be, its pretty much an
"anywhere outside the US will redirect, and its on the server side so we can't
control it.

Although, if you specify a localized site (not the US version) it won't
redirect, so if you really just want an English copy, use google.ca as a workaround.

Comment 4

[Jo Hermans]

dupe of bug 269062, like bug 272586

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

Comment 5

[Mike Connor [:mconnor]]

sorry for bugspam, long-overdue mass reassign of ancient QA contact bugs,
filter on "beltznerLovesGoats" to get rid of this mass change