Joseph Essas, the blog…

Since early last week, every time I access Google from home – it only shows up in Japanese. I’m sure it’s some kind of fancy IP geo-recognition software that for some reason assumes that my Time Warner Cable IP is in Japan.

However, what I’m absolutely annoyed about, is that there is no way (at least I didn’t find it yet) for me to switch back to English. Every request to http://www.google.com – gets redirected to http://www.google.co.jp, and some (not all) other applications gets redirected to it’s JP version as well. In fact I’m writing this entry in Blogger localized in Japanese, which means I don’t understand a word in it’s interface. (If this entry made it to the blog – that means i found the “Publish” button).

I’m really surprised – how hard it is to make a button – “View in English” (They do have it on Google JP homepage, but not in Blogger)? What if I’m in JP, connecting from local hotel? And how hard it is to fix the actual geo-location software?

Now – what really makes me wonder – is that I’m actually logged in into my Google account. Which obviously should have the knowledge that I’m an English speaking person. So either Google is not taking that into account when showing me localized interfaces, or worse – it does not have as much demographic data as people assume.