BOINK

Okay, Google has an issue that has been irritating me for quite some time, and I need to vent about it.  To make it relevant to the blog, let me technofy the problem and then sneak in my rant about it…

Google’s home page for search should be pretty familiar to everybody.  What might be unfamiliar to many people is that the domain part of the URL in the address bar of their web browsers changes from “google.com” to a more location-specific domain when they hit this page.  (Perhaps this is untrue in the US, however I didn’t make observations of this behaviour last time I was there)

For example, in Canada, when you type in “www.google.com”, you will be redirected to “www.google.ca” (again, it’s been a while since I was there, and this might not be the accurate domain).  I live in Qatar.  When I type in “www.google.com”, I get redirected to “www.google.com.qa”.  It’s country-specific.  It’s “location aware” (cue oohs and aahs).

Google takes the location awareness one step further, and changes the language of this page based on, well, your location.  So in Qatar, the page comes up in Arabic.  This is swell if you can read Arabic.  I can’t.  Many expatriates can’t either.  Fortunately, Google has addressed this issue by ensuring there is a “Google in English” link, written in English, on the Arabic page.  By clicking on this link, a cookie is set in my browser that ensures that I will always get the English version of the page from then on.  The page reloads, in English, yet I still get the google.com.qa domain in the address bar, along with whatever benefits that brings me.

Google Qatar's Default Page

Google Qatar's English Page

This is as much thought that Google has put into this wonderful feature.  (FYI, the rant is starting now…)

Google has dozens of wonderful services. Blogger. YouTube. Google Reader. Docs and Spreadsheets, etc.  …and something called “knol” which I wanted to check out.  It would be acceptable if these services looked at the cookie which was set by the Google search page, and subsequently changed their own language based on that cookie.  Alas, they do not.  Nor, it seems, do they have any partially-intelligent mechanism for a new visitor to change the language.

Instead, I am at the mercy of my location, as well as Google’s location-awareness technology, and consequently I cannot use these services.  This is not only bad application design, it’s bad architecture, period.  It seems simple enough, however this is the type of concept that so many application developers and solutions architects fail to grasp: usage scenarios that fall outside the obvious.  In Google’s case, they have created a service that ONLY satisfies the “obvious usage scenario”: where a visitor from a country MUST be able to read the primary language of that country.  This is a ROOKIE mistake.

Google, I am simultaneously LAUGHING at you and FRUSTRATED with you.  Fix your mess.

On top of this, Google has provided no means to contact them for support or feature requests (…that I’ve been able to find).  If anybody has discovered Google’s support contact information, please leave a comment with it.  I’ll be ever so grateful.

In the meantime, here are how some of their pages look in Qatar.  (I also invite you to try and find the “View in English” button…)

Google's Blogger Bar - not available in English in Qatar, apparently

A Google Blogger Profile Page (John Rogers - cool - aka Kung Fu Monkey) also not in English, except for the parts written by John

Knol. I can't even find out what this is about. Google English FAIL