4 Jun
2004
4 Jun
'04
11:47 a.m.
begin Friday 04 June 2004 12:51, Brent Frère quote:
Indeed there is a possibility to select prefered
languages in a web
browser. However the problem here is not this one.
Google proposes also to set a cookie that contains your preferences
(click on preferencies on the main page).
The real problem here is indeed related to routing. By using a
belgian-issued range of IP addresses (and this be routed through
Belgium), the customers appears as being in Belgium as reported by it's
source IP address. Thus, Google proposes by default dutch as language,
even if french is spoken in two third of the country and that german is
also an official language in Belgium.
Don't worry too badly about google.be; google is known to often screw
up the language.
Google.lu defaults to German, even though near 100% of Luxembourg
actually speaks Luxembourgish, and even though a sizeable amount of
the population (especially the older generations, who lived through
WWII) dislikes it to be lumped together with the Germans.
If Google had a minimum amount of political smartness, they'd have at
least chosen French as the default language for google.lu . Or even
better, they would have applied for a government grant to translate
Google into Luxembourgish ;-)
Alain