Google To Phase Out Country Code Top-level Domains (blog.google) 47
Google has announced that it will begin phasing out country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) such as google.ng and google.com.br, redirecting all traffic to google.com. The change comes after improvements in Google's localization capabilities rendered these separate domains unnecessary.
Since 2017, Google has provided identical local search experiences whether users visited country-specific domains or google.com. The transition will roll out gradually over the coming months, and users may need to re-establish search preferences during the migration.
Since 2017, Google has provided identical local search experiences whether users visited country-specific domains or google.com. The transition will roll out gradually over the coming months, and users may need to re-establish search preferences during the migration.
Indeed (Score:2)
When my VPN uses the Emirates exit points all the text is in Arabic and useless to me, no matter which country code.
Re: (Score:3)
UAE is a good place to buy gems.
Re:Indeed (Score:4, Insightful)
This is because google completely ignores the accept-language header sent by your browser.
Really accept-language has been a standard HTTP feature since long before google even existed, if my browsers says my preferred language is english then you shouldn't be serving a page in arabic irrespective of what domain i visit or where i visit from.
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4) dual stack doesn't exist, either. ipv4 and ipv6 live in different galaxies, a computer cannot have an ipv4 and ipv6 address at the same time. if a user is accessing e.g. gmail first via an ipv4 and then via an ipv6 address in short succession, it's clearly an attack and their account should be blocked without any recourse.
That's not terribly surprising...
It's an unusual scenario because modern browsers should always be using v6 if available...
It's also not uncommon for the v6 address to be dedicated while the legacy address is shared potentially with hundreds of other users - eg CGNAT... I get all kinds of problems (captchas, rate limiting, bans) if i access sites via legacy ip here, while everything works well over v6.
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This is because google completely ignores the accept-language header sent by your browser.
It objectively does *not* ignore it. In fact it actively prompts you if the local you're searching in if you prefer to receive results only in the language your browser sets. The thing is language does not define how relevant a result may be, unless your language matches your location. Mine doesn't. I prefer English results, I've set my browser to request english, but I live somewhere where if I limit my results to English I get objectively worse results when looking for locally relevant information which m
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I've found i get the "search for results in english" option if i typed a search term in english instead of whatever the local language is, nothing to do with the headers sent by the browser.
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It has to do with multiple things. For example I get a "search for results in English" prompt when I also search for a German phrase on Google.de while in Germany.
You're confused because you think that there is a 1 to 1 relationship here. There isn't.
It's getting worse (Score:3, Insightful)
Sometimes I just want to search something in general but Googles shovels useless local results to me, which is really annoying. There used to be ways to get around this, but it's getting harder and harder.
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I use startpage.com [startpage.com] as my search engine. I think it does use Google on the back-end, but it strips out any personal or IP information about me.
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but Googles shovels useless local results to me
Use a VPN. So they won't know where "local" is. Use a VPN in Burundi (poorest country in the world) so they will just figure that advertising will be lost on you.
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Am I the only person who thinks their choice of fonts is getting uglier by the day? Compare 2015 https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org] against today https://www.google.com/ [google.com]
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Are you talking about their logo or their choice of font? Because the serifed font used for the logo was always ugly, old fashioned and clashed against the san serifed font used on the site itself. And the site font? Well that's unchanged in the past decade.
You silly little people... (Score:3)
"We know where you are at all times. And BTW, although you are as yet unaware of a problem, you ought to get that mole checked out." -- Google.
They can't automate that? (Score:4, Interesting)
The transition will roll out gradually over the coming months, and users may need to re-establish search preferences during the migration.
Are you telling me that Google doesn't have the resources to make an automated tool that says, "Redirected from top level domain $google.country_code = search preference for location $country?" Really? Gotta do it manually?
That's a big ol' code W-T-F.
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Are you telling me that Google doesn't have the resources to make an automated tool that says, "Redirected from top level domain $google.country_code = search preference for location $country?" Really? Gotta do it manually?
That's a big ol' code W-T-F.
Your search preferences are stored in your web browser as a cookie. They are not stored at Google.
Cookies have been designed to be sent back only to a webserver with the exact same hostname that set them in the first place.
It would be a pretty big security problem if it wasn't.
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May I introduce you to 3rd party cookies ?
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You mean the thing which many people block? Which Google itself disabled for some users as experiment, which are disabled by default in several browsers out there? You mean those 3rd party cookies?
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Yes, I mean those, and I have had them disabled for a few decades, long before this became the default or recommended option in many browsers.
I don't like them any more than you do. I was merely responding to the OP because they didn't seem to know about their existence.
Re: They can't automate that? (Score:2)
The redirect can include a tracker id in the url which will resolve on the backend. I'm pretty sure the users will be tracked all the way.
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Really? Gotta do it manually?
Welcome to the world of privacy. We spent years isolating sites and campaigning for companies to not store user information on their servers, and to roll out browsers which can't read or write local information from other sites. We wanted to be in control of this stuff, and now we are. It's the bed we made and get to lie in.
Re: They can't automate that? (Score:2)
Don't worry though, this will be the last time you'll need to do this. Once the entire world uses google.com for everything, then one little cookie will track you over the entire internet.
This started a long time ago, but most recently was when maps.google.* became google.com/maps. All of a sudden, your need for directions helped in personalising ads across the whole Internet. Now they're doing the same with search.
Fwiw, this was always going to happen - it was really just an issue of scale and logistics. T
Bullshit (Score:2)
>Since 2017, Google has provided identical local search experiences whether users visited country-specific domains or google.com
Not true. Only the country-specific google domain offers me the option to restrict results to those within my country. Though that's still far from perfect - you never really know if the page you've found is American or not unless you track down the company info because they all hide their location to sucker you into international purchases - it's slightly better than Google.c
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Only the country-specific google domain offers me the option to restrict results to those within my country.
False. Click Tools > Advanced Search and from there you can limit results either by region or by language, in ANY version of google even www.google.com
Thanks for assuming what I want (Score:4, Interesting)
I hate Google because whenever I travel. My browser clearly sends Accept-Language header. Why do they proudly ignore it and assume I want their page - and search results! - in whatever language the local majority uses?
Oh, right. They want me to log in to an account.
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Unfortunately, Accept-Language is somewhat flawed. It's a priority list. I have English set to first, and French second. Both google.com and google.fr front pages show up in English. If I reverse the order of display page languages in Firefox, which presumably reverses the order in the header, the google.fr front page now show up in French. Unfortunately, the google.com front page still shows up in English. This is probably because google.com currently doesn't support French.
What I would like is for google.
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There's nothing to prevent you sending site-specific preferences - eg setting a different priority list of languages for specific sites vs your default set.
Many people only support one language, so a site rendering in any other language becomes unreadable. If a site has the user's preferred language available then it should use that as the user might not be able to read anything else and thus couldn't change the language manually even if such an option is provided.
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Well, there is one thing, the browser not having the ability to set per-site language preferences.
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That's something that should be a browser feature or addon to set per-domain Accept-Languages.
Re: Thanks for assuming what I want (Score:2)
More than 40% of the worldwide population is fluent in at least 2 languages. I think it should be built in to the browser, not an extension.
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I just tested, the interface updates the language without problem for me. If consulted google.com (unlogged) and changing intl.accept_languages in Firefox to add any of several values (Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, German, Dutch), pressing F5 in between. The google interface updates. The results however are country-specific tied to my IP. It notices the discrepancy and includes a link to a help page "how google determines the language of search results" https://support.google.com/web... [google.com]
You can also
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I hate Google because whenever I travel. My browser clearly sends Accept-Language header. Why do they proudly ignore it and assume I want their page - and search results! - in whatever language the local majority uses?
I hate that about online newspapers. For example, you visit the web site of a UK newspaper from the US, and the morons who run it automatically redirect you to a site tailored for the US. It would seem that their microbrains can't grasp the notion that people will want to read the UK version from the US. Sometimes I wonder whether web page designers are selected for their inveterate stupidity.
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You're probably stuck behind a shared CGNAT that has gotten blocked, and slashdot does not publish AAAA records so you can't connect from a dedicated v6 address.
Will be a _LOT_ better for many users if they ever start publishing AAAA records.
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Death to ClownFlare! Oh, and fuck the Zuck.
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But is there a way to fake out and bypass Cloudflare? It seems they are the enemy here, so is slashdot for using them
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You can manually force it to use IPv6 (cloudflare always supports v6 even if the AAAA records arent published), encode the legacy address as hex and put it at the end of 2606:4700::XXXX:XXXX then add it to your /etc/hosts, or use something like https://gitlab.com/miyurusanka... [gitlab.com] which automates this.
I get constant captcha problems on cloudflare sites which don't publish AAAA records, and almost never get it on sites with AAAA.
Cloudflare is just a proxy, if you can work out the origin server it forwards to an
Sometimes I want results from a specific country (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to use google.it when I wanted specifically Italian content, which is something I need to do quite a bit for work purposes (I'm in the UK).
That is no longer possible, and it has made it much more difficult for me to find Italian content, because it always assumes I want results in English.
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Then use the search options like a normal person. On the right of the screen click Tools > Advanced Search. In there you can set for results to come only from a certain country, or a certain language.
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I use a local browser start page made of some very basic html for every search engine or any other web site I will typically want to start with a search, like Ebay or the local classifieds.
The Google search field has a few radio buttons for the different languages I sometimes use, like
input type=radio name=meta value="lr=lang_en"
Nowadays I use this feature much more than I used to.
Localization Features? (Score:2)
I think it's more that they want to have all cookies on the same domain, so they can always access everything. That's the same thing why they moved maps. You now can't just enable Geolocation for maps.google.com without enabling it for the main page.
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Great conspiracy that breaks down when you realise they objectively already control everything about your browser which they openly state sends information about you to them. On top of that Chrome doesn't block 3rd party cookie access
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Great there are other browsers which are not Chromium-based.
Maybe you're right an all chromium-based Browsers are "already controlled" by Google, but my Firefox is not. Even though Mozilla also has quite a few questionable features, you can turn them off.
Nigeria (Score:2)
How are we allowing a country to be named that?