451736 - Google switches to the local language while abroad (should use Accept-Language)

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Search, defect)

Description

[m]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-GB; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008071615 Fedora/3.0.1-1.fc9 Firefox/3.0.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-GB; rv:1.9.0.1) Gecko/2008071615 Fedora/3.0.1-1.fc9 Firefox/3.0.1

My locale is set to en_GB, when I type anything in google's search while in England, it loads google.com - not perfect, but can live with that.

When I am overseas (i.e. in Poland or in Spain) and I am trying to search for anything, google's search is switching its language to Polish or Spanish (depending where I am) - I believe it is incorrect and not desired behaviour as user might not understand other languages.



Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. While in Spain have your locale set to en_UK
2. Type anything in the search field
Actual Results:  
search loads google.es with results

Expected Results:  
search loads google.co.uk with results

Comment 2

[m]

thanks for closing this bug but I believe it is a different issue - my issue here is that when I am in Spain, search loads google.es website and shows me results in Spanish on the Spanish website - I don't even look at the suggestions (I am not using them at all) - I just enter a query and hit enter - see screenshot

Comment 3

[m]

Attachment: incorrectly loaded search results by google

Comment 4

[Jo Hermans]

Oh yeah, that was the wrong bug (search suggest instead of the search results). I can't find back the right bug report, it's too early in the morning. But it's not a Firefox bug, it's a decision by Google. I'll explain and give you the workaround.

The problem is that Google ignores your accepted-language (see Options->Content) when you use the search field. Note that the English search engine doesn't force the language to a specific one, unlike most localizations (which then ignore their own accepted-languages setting).

The reason that you end up at a Spanish website, is that the ipaddress is a Spanish one. That's a very reasonable assumption ofcourse, but it ignores that you have your GUI in English, and your preferred language too, so it might be a good idea to present at least the search results in English (the website can remain google.es for optimization purposes).

The workaround is set a cookie, by going to www.google.com (or www.google.es), and clicking "Google.com in English" on the bottom of the webpage. In that way, Google will always use your preferred language. In my country (Belgium), people have to set the cookie, because Google can't determine the language from the ipaddress.

The problem is that Google should use the accepted-languages setting instead of trying to guess. But that's not a Firefox bug, it's a decision that Google made a long time ago. Maybe because there are many people that are running the default browser (English, not localized), but still want the search results in their local language. Or maybe because parsing that accented-language header was too complex (it can contain a whole list of preferred languages !)

And by the way : changing your locale is ignored by Firefox - you can set the accepted-language header in Tools->Options->Content, which can be different from your locale (or even the browser GUI). Note that it's a list, not a single language.

Comment 5

[m]

thanks for explanation. setting a cookie helped - now google even knows that I am logged in into iGoogle.
Thanks a lot!

Comment 6

[m]

I am closing it as there is a simple work around for that bug and it depends on google, not on firefox.