Thursday, April 19, 2012

Googling 80%

Bwo, who is leaving for Houston later today, says the reason my blog is so dammed boring is that I don't complain about the 80% of life here any more. It's true. So one gripe that keeps coming back to annoy me is google. Yes, that wonderful life enhancing company called google. It has got to do with this annoying invasive, all knowing, arrogant way of deciding where you are and what language you speak.  No matter how many time, and how deeply I set my defaults or language options on every machine or operating system, every now and then google decides I only speak Hebrew.  This happens at least once a week. It's particularly visible on logging into blogger.  Suddenly I get a screen in Hebrew where there is not one word of English and I need to log in to change the defaults. What happens to people who speak no Hebrew what so ever! How do they deal with this. I notice that once it has decided you are in Israel and therefore speak Hebrew, even changing the language is in Hebrew. So you have to scroll down on the language list and select "anglit" all written in Hebrew!


I remember a few years ago when we were on vacation in Hungary. I surfed over to blackpetero.blogger.com to do a spot of blogging when suddenly my screen was in Hungarian.  Luckily I remembered where the login in button was. I am all for localization, but there is a limit. Just because you are geographically in one country there is no reason to assume that this is the only language needed. Even Microsoft allows you to set persistent language defaults not geographically based. I can just imaging some Google squint being completely proud of the way he has added "intelligence" to the internet (definitely a male).


This is very 80% of google. Stop making decisions for me.  If I have set my user interface to English on my machine, never assume I want a completely local language screen.  Is that so hard?  Not to mention the annoying habit of asking me if I want to translate every Hebrew page I go to. What's that all about?

2 comments:

Jozie said...

Yay. The BPO I love is back.

So yes, you said it. Incredibly annoying of Google. I think there used to be the word English in English somewhere on the page, but alas no more.

And while we are on the subject. How come, on EVERY single imported item in Israel, they put a unremovable white label with the local importers contact info in Hebrew Dafka over the English user directions. I suppose only Hebrew speakers have the right to know how much water to add to the quinoa, or if and how long to let it soak, or how many calories one is actually consuming. Each and every time, I try to slowly and gently ease off the damn thing, but it does no good, just tears up the original label underneath. ugh.

And while we are still on the subject- Please don't get me started on the so called nutritional labeling system over here. Is it so hard to put the weight of the food in a place that is easy to find???
The concept of how many servings in the package is totally foreign.
Just so you know:
Feta Cheese, גבינה מלוחה (Tnuva Cow's Milk Feta Cheese) Serving Size: 1 Oz (28g), Calories: 60. Now figure out how many grams are in the whole container- (if you can find it) then after much calculating you may have an idea of how many serving there are and how many calories you actually consumed. Oh and to make things even clearer the vitamin and mineral content are written in percentages. Of course I ended up having to google that and still did not get a clear answer.

Jozie said...

I have been asked to clarify by my wonderful blackbrotherinlaw that even tho I am currently in Houston, with blackmotherinlaw, the above comment is referring to nutritional labeling in Israel!!! Sorry for any confusion this may have caused.