More browser madness: is Google forcing me to use the .co.uk site?
Following on from an earlier post, I’m trying out various browsers (to try to escape Safari’s memory-eating tendencies).
Camino is slightly ahead at the moment, because it can import bookmarks etc from Safari; Firefox doesn’t have anything in the “Import…” dialog box when I open it.
However, both Firefox and Safari are defaulting to opening google.co.uk even though I type google.com into the URL field. As is iCab. As is Omniweb.
I would suspect it was to do with my ISP, except that it doesn’t happen with Safari.
That’s weird. I mean, weird. Principally because the .co.uk site doesn’t have access to the Google History feature, which I think is cool (and cooler than things like localised maps, which I can go to the .co.uk site if I want them, thank you).
Anyone else in the UK finding this?
- These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
- On the Guardian site today: breakout, the real web game (14 December 2007; score: 46.5%)
- The Spartacus approach to beating comment spam (9 November 2004; score: 41.5%)
- Why not explain the $700B bailout with a comic - you know, like Google? (25 September 2008; score: 40.15%)
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May 31st, 2005 at 11:19 pm
Even less usefully, during my recent trip to Athens, I always ended up at google.gr presumably because I was coming from a .gr IP.
May 31st, 2005 at 11:26 pm
I don’t find that at all on my home PC, whether using my plus.net ISP or my mum’s Demon connection. Having said that, there’s a prominent “Go to Google.co.uk” link on the google.com page for me.
All the machines in my uni labs default to .co.uk though.
June 1st, 2005 at 8:23 am
egad ! It must be Google … just tried to google.com in IE6 on W2K at work, and there I was in .co.uk … it does have a “go to google.com” link though.
annoying.
June 1st, 2005 at 8:46 am
You’ve tried Safari, Camino, Firefox, Omniweb and iCab. I’ve no idea how well it has been ported to Mac but you seem to have a marked reluctance to try Opera …
On your Google .com/co.uk problem, I’m sure Google is attempting to detect your location from your IP address and to serve you the appropriate site, perhaps partly for load-balancing reasons.
June 1st, 2005 at 9:18 am
Charles,
You’re absolutely right! Firefox goes to .co.uk and Safari goes correctly.
Even when I use the search in Firefox (why didn’t they add THAT into Safari), it still goes to UK!
However, I tried out my test version of Omniweb (5.1) and using the search there (implemented like Firefox) it correctly goes to .com when I chose that, and .co.uk on.
It has to be a google thing, but why it doesn’t happen in some browsers is a mystery to me.
I would use Omniweb - to me it’s best of Firefox and Safari - but for 2 things; tables don’t copy and paste properly (eg yahoo quote pages can’t be copied into Excel as rows/columns). Omniweb agree with this but it’s in the webcore engine I think - Safari has the same problem. The other thing I found with Omniweb was I could not do the BBCi stuff - it ground the processor to a halt, whereas Safari does it fine, and Firefox is ok (but not brilliant) on my ageing powerbook. Again, this was accepted by Omni, but I’m not aware of a fix (needs to handle the real plug-in better I guess)
Ian
June 1st, 2005 at 11:21 am
Yes, I discovered Google doing this.
As far as I can tell, Google does a redirect based on the allocation of the IP block your ISP is using. However, if you click on the “Go to Google.com” link on the google.co.uk page, Google will set a cookie that automatically directs you to google.com and all its extra goodness.
At least that’s what worked for me…
June 1st, 2005 at 1:25 pm
This always ensures you get to the .com version:
http://www.google.com/ncr
And I *think* that’s what reset the cookie(s) on my machine when I last experienced this problem.
June 5th, 2005 at 2:32 pm
Google redirects you to your local site: this happened in all fourteen countries I’ve visited in the last nine months.
April 29th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
I was looking for the answer to the contrary - how do I set my default search to google.co.uk (from google.com)?
April 29th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
@Moz: if you’re in the UK, it should be happening. If you’re not.. dunno, have you tried signing up for a Google account and playing?