Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Country domain is the worst way to handle language preference. We already have a perfectly valid way to handle language preference with Accept-Language. There is no need to register domain under every possible country domain you could localize. And countries do not equal languages. Bilingual countries would be screwed if country domains were the only option.


Why is it the worst way to handle language preference?

If you are a local you are probably very used to your country domain, it is probably on par with .com.

Now the Accept-Language is quite subtle and guess how that is set up in an internet café? Can you even change it? Will the next customer be happy about that? I'd be mighty impressed if more than 1% of the people that surfs the web has a clue about Accept-Language.

Also, if one asks for a local country domain that really should be the localized version, sometimes I actually want to use google for a language different other than my own.

If I for instance wanted to search in English on something that has a similar wording as Swedish I'd like to go to google.com in order to quickly get rid of the Swedish-bias (since that doesn't work I sometimes use google.co.uk instead).




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: