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Comment by SOLAR_FIELDS | Hacker News Reader

Uber actually had a pretty reasonable explanation for their app being huge when their rather large app size made the rounds several years ago. Turns out localization takes a lot of space. I wonder how much of LinkedIn’s insane size can be attributed to that vs just lazy coding

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If I only ever use a single locale on my phone, why isn't there a way to avoid needing to download all of the extra info that my phone will never use?

In Ubers case, the app works well when you travel. Not sure why LinkedIn would need that, if that is your question.

The last thing I want is my phone or apps on it to automatically change locale depending on the GPS location.

Google Flights does this. It’s so frustrating. It displays prices in local currency, no matter how many times you go to the menu and pick a currency.

And it always uses local calendar alignment, which is “fun”.

A few years ago I moved to Germany, not speaking a word of the local language.

Imagine my joy when every google site helpfully switched to German, ignoring my browser's accept-language.

Thankfully some googler must have been also annoyed by this at some point, so there is a somewhat little-known URL: google.com/ncr (No Country Redirect) which will revert everything to US English. Doesn't help if you wanted to default to any different locale, but it was perfect for me. Thank you unknown annoyed googler.

>It displays prices in local currency, no matter how many times you go to the menu and pick a currency.

Works fine for me, including when I'm in a foreign country and I need to change back to my home currency. Are you sure you're not disabling cookies or whatever?

Nope — happens when I’m logged into my Google account even. I’m sure I decline whatever cookie notifications they throw at me (except when some dark patten tricks me), but in any case, that sort of behavior shouldn’t be governed by any privacy-concerning cookies.

> I’m sure I decline whatever cookie notifications they throw at me (except when some dark patten tricks me),

Okay I retested with a EU VPN and I can confirm it's due to you declining the cookies. If you decline cookies and change currencies, it adds your desired currency to the url as a query parameter, so if you navigate to flights.google.com again you lose it.

>but in any case, that sort of behavior shouldn’t be governed by any privacy-concerning cookies.

In other words:

you: "don't store cookies and data about me"

google: "ok, we won't store cookies and data about you"

you: "why didn't you store my currency?"

Actually if you read the cookie prompt that you declined, it specifically mentions that they use cookies for "personalization" purposes, and that if you decline they will not use cookies for that purpose. Storing your desired currency arguably counts as "personalization" purposes, so I don't really see the issue here.

Bundling basic app functionality with do-not-track prefs is user-hostile.

And, as I said, I’m logged in when this happens, proving that it is intentionally user-hostile, since they actually have the tracking data they need on the backend but are too lazy or organizationally incompetent to assemble it.

In the case of Uber, the service they provide is highly dependent on where you are.

Localisation means in this context the translations, date and number formatting, currency, etc.

So no, that doesn't change depending on where you are.

Whats the point? I will still want to know the price in both my and the local currency in the language I know.

This is not meant to be disrespectful, but it looks like you have not yet traveled to a location where Uber offers a service that is very different from the one they offer where you live.

I live in the US, use Uber, and have used Uber in India. The service offerings were very different in the two countries. I was glad that the same Uber app I used in the US, connected to my credit card, works well in India without needing a new app to be installed.

In India, for example, you can call a tuktuk or a scooter, which you cannot do in the States. Not to mention all the different localized taxes, fees, regulations etc

If Uber offers different services depending on the locale, then it needs to dynamically load/select from different views available. It's not just language translations. Sibling commenters have mentioned all the different views/functionalities that vary by region: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25376346

I still get a few ads and configuration settings in Spanish I believe because I created an Uber account at an airport in Mexico.

I think App Store's app thinning doesn't care about locales, so any such attempt should download an additional localization file from Uber's servers. While not technically impossible, it will mean that downloading an app is no longer sufficient to use the app; it should also go through the initial (or incremental) download, which was significant in the case of Uber's case (1 MB per locale according to the blog AFAIK), so it won't be as optimal.

I mean, does it matter for an app like Uber? It's not a document editor, you'd never use it without an internet connection.

But the moment you need the new localization information, you'd have just gotten off a long flight in a new country on a data plan that might not be as cost-effective as your plan in your home country.

I believe they optimized for that usecase.

You can still use it without waiting for a MB of the localization file to be downloaded. (Maybe that can make much more sense to, say, social media apps where you will have to download as much data to do anything.)

Here is the hn comment you are most likely referring to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25376346.

> Turns out localization takes a lot of space.

Does localization involve more than a few hundred strings per locale, all of which should compress really well? Maybe add in some localized icon sets, but much fewer than the number of supported locales.

I'm not saying you're (or they're) wrong, I'm genuinely curious.

This "localization" also includes the code for online payment methods available in a particular locale.

So for the traveler, when they arrive in a new area that's supported by Uber, the app will just work instead of a "Please wait while we download the necessary payment SDK for your current location..." notification.

You didn't just download Uber "for USA" - you've downloaded Uber for "all countries where Uber exists" just in case you might leave your home area and travel a location that Uber operates.

Testing matrix must be complex...

The simple example I gave in a sibling comment is that in India you have the option to call a tuktuk or a scooter which has a whole different guide set, flow, more screens. And lots of different airport specific, town specific, county specific, country specific regulations about things that need to be shown, taxes, etc. For all of that to be seamlessly available as you travel you need to be downloading a pretty large bundle upfront. Else you end up in a situation where you need the service’s reliability the most (travelling in a foreign country) and not being able to use it easily (because you have crappier data from bad infrastructure or a cheap SIM card and can’t download a location specific bundle)

In the case of uber. Maybe they have a local list of every city and street of thr world localized on device?

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