I don’t mind them using that to guess, but the #1 thing a website should do when you first start using it is to allow you to select a language, and then to remember that language.
It’s extremely irritating when they use GeoIP to guess your language and then require you to know the guessed language to know where to find the settings and how to change the settings back to English, or whatever other language you prefer.
As an aside, this is how I know that Google and Facebook are lying about having a “mind control ray” that knows you so well that they show you extremely targeted ads that you will always click on. Bitch, if you can’t even figure out the languages I understand, you know nothing about me.
I currently live in Canada, so I don’t experience that. But if I look up a recipe and it is on foodnetwork.com I immediately get a modal popup saying “Hello Canada! Were you looking for Food Network Canada?” asking me if I wanted to go to foodnetwork.ca. If I choose that option, it doesn’t take me to the recipe on the Canadian site, it just takes me to the homepage. Utterly useless.
But, that’s not because of a language thing. My guess is that it’s a rights thing. The US and Canadian brands are probably owned by different entities, and there’s an agreement to try to redirect all traffic hitting .com to the .ca site. I don’t know if that’s the case for IGN, but it could be.
I don’t mind them using that to guess, but the #1 thing a website should do when you first start using it is to allow you to select a language, and then to remember that language.
It’s extremely irritating when they use GeoIP to guess your language and then require you to know the guessed language to know where to find the settings and how to change the settings back to English, or whatever other language you prefer.
As an aside, this is how I know that Google and Facebook are lying about having a “mind control ray” that knows you so well that they show you extremely targeted ads that you will always click on. Bitch, if you can’t even figure out the languages I understand, you know nothing about me.
And then there’s IGN, who blocks you from even accessing English articles and redirects you to their local website.
I currently live in Canada, so I don’t experience that. But if I look up a recipe and it is on foodnetwork.com I immediately get a modal popup saying “Hello Canada! Were you looking for Food Network Canada?” asking me if I wanted to go to foodnetwork.ca. If I choose that option, it doesn’t take me to the recipe on the Canadian site, it just takes me to the homepage. Utterly useless.
But, that’s not because of a language thing. My guess is that it’s a rights thing. The US and Canadian brands are probably owned by different entities, and there’s an agreement to try to redirect all traffic hitting .com to the .ca site. I don’t know if that’s the case for IGN, but it could be.