The network connection we're using during the development conference in Japan is provided by Y! Japan BroadBand. No surprise there. The real surprise came when I switched over to a terminal and typed:
$ lynx http://google.com/
Google "helpfully" noticed that I'm in Japan and sent me to their Japanese site. The problem with this, of course, is that I neither read or speak Japanese.
The solution is quite simple:
$ lynx http://search.yahoo.com/
Using Yahoo! Search gives me an English with a Google back-end. Remarkably, that's what I was expecting Google to provide for me.
The lesson here is that IP-based geo-targeting doesn't always do what you expect. Is it really intended to be a substitute for proper branding and marketing of www.google.co.jp? Beats me. Are the Japanese too dumb to try visiting a native language site on their own? I think not. Maybe Google does?
Update: Retarded. If I accept Google's cookies it works. But when I block them I end up on the Japanese site. Why on earth are cookies necessary when a simple redirect will do? I dunno.
Posted by jzawodn at October 21, 2003 10:09 PM
It should be based on your HTTP headers sent, depending on what preferred language you have set in your browser.
Perhaps lynx isn't sending that, so it's falling back to geo-IP?
What's even more useful is when you go to the settings page of www.google.co.jp to change the language which all the messages are displayed in, all of the language names (except for six at the top...) are in Kanji... Finding "English" would be a bit of a chore. ;)
OTOH, at least there's a link to google.com on the front page...
Er, though I'm told that the text is actually a mixture of kanji and katakana (In case anyone was ready to correct me :)
I remember this and I thought of it as a really cool trick. Nothing more, and a little annoying.
They have been doing this for ages. The way around it is to just go to google.com/ncr
Rasmus:
That still takes me to the Japanese site.
Jeremy
yes, google did this in Korea too, since 2000. the problem is, if you don't use their Korean (or Japanese) site, it's really hard to search for Korean web pages. hence it's understandable for most of the users.
a trick: go to google.com/search?q=whatever (don't forget to escape '?' tho) after failing the search, it should stay in the English page.
I live up here in Montreal, but I am American. So everytime I go to the page, it's Canadian focused. I have cookies on, and whatever, it just redirects me to google.ca
Not that I really care, I can still read everything just fine. However, news.google.com puts all my news for Canada. I personally would like to see what's going on in my home country..but that can still be accomplished.
So, they do a bit of both, looking at the language string, AND geo-IP'ing you.
What if you try to go to the WAP site? Does that work? http://wap.google.com/
