Your site was presented to me in Spanish. Please don't do this. Don't choose a language for me based on my location.
1- In theory browser language should be the perfect way to do it, in practice as often as 25% of the time or more it's set incorrectly. Unfortunately, that means a lot of people that don't speak English end up with English content.
2- There is more than just language, in several regions we are localized and not just translated. So it's important to send specific content for the region, like prices, specific local features (e.g. payment methods), specific photography to better appeal to the local audience, local user stories & articles, etc.
3- It's especially hard with English because that is, in essence, the "default" language. If your browser language is set to Spanish and you live in Germany, we'll respect that, but it's a bit harder to do with English.
We're definitely open to input on how to handle it better... One step forward would be to bring the language selector up to the top of the page so it is much more accessible.
I just checked Facebook and Google from a newly opened "private browsing" tab and both gave me English versions.
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/en
Note the "en" in the URL and "English" in the language selector in the top right of the page.
The button text and input placeholder text is not in English for me, nor is the text at the bottom of the page. Blogger, Google groups and I think other Google stuff, like Flights, is the same.
Android phone in en-gb. Play Store account from UK. Download Waze while in the middle of France, get the voice indications in French. Who's the clever cookie that decided that? :-)
Also, @drusenko (forgot your name on HN)[Edited to add his name], it SHOULD be pretty easy to change your code to switch languages based on [Accepted-Language] and still do localization for payments/time/calendar stuff like that. PM me if you want.
also, as previous sites don't add the chosen language in the click request, i don't see how being on hn previously is relevant.
the flip side to this is - if this is actually a big problem (incorrect renderings of language) maybe some dnn could be applied for a new start up idea! haha
Spanish speakers (in Spain at least) tend to come from google.es, which prefers Spanish-language results, or from Spanish language links and discussions.
It is wrong behaviour to choose my language based on my location.
Given, they're "similar" languages, but I would think Google would recognize "não" (no), for example, as belonging to the Portuguese language (especially since it's the only language that uses that word).
You're wrong. :)
This is what the Accept-Language header is meant for[1]. AFAIK it is sent by most modern browsers, although as the referenced MDN article explains it isn't always an accurate reflection of user preferences. I'm not sure how iOS Safari in particular sets its value, but I would imagine that it is based on the current OS language setting.
[1]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Content_ne...