If tyhe title of this blogpost describes your problem then copy and paste this into the google help forums to help consolidate what i belive is one of the stupidest and nmost arrogant assumptions of the modern web 2.0 enviroment.
Google wishes us to keep their cookies in our temp folders so they candecide what we want for us.. machines will never be able to decide whjats better for us, and even if they could we dont want this, as that would be the end of personal freedom of choice.
Considering almost anyone with any sense clears all their temp, cookie and cached files on shut down or browser closure (even my grandma these days knows to do this), it should be obvious that this consumer tailored attempt to think for the end user is of absolutely no use, and in fact, considering that most people cannot read other languages, can cause a massive boob!
a perfect example is with my case;
i live in thailand.
every time i open google, the page loads in Thai, which is completely unreadable for most endusers who are not Thai.
So even if i can remember visually where the search settings link is (top right in google search page), when i find the drop down list to go to change language settings, it is in Thai and unreadable, preventing me from knowing which option to select
once i try each link and finally see a load of tick boxes wit the languages to chose as default, it is still unreadable! (or would be if i couln not read Thai, which luckily i do)
why?
because the language tickbox for english does not say 'English' in english! It says 'ภาษาอังกฤษ'!!!!!
so assuming an english speaking monolingual person lives in or is in Thailand for holiday, opens his search page and had deleted cookies,the page will be unreadable.
The dumb assumption that because you are surfing the web uin arabia, means that you can read arabic proves that you google people arent thinking straight
no one wants your cookies boys, i for one at least dont.. i just want to surf the web as i wish and choose what i want myself without others resetting my choice of settings.
The real solution would be to do what you are anyway doing; cache our info on your servers not in cookies on our pc, so that when we delete cookies our search settings are not lost.
I dont believe you cant do this because;
i opened a page called hi5 where i was a member but didnt use since i changed pcs (2 pcs since i last went there)
as i went to log in.. the page automatically remembered my passwoird and log in. This is the case with a few other places i never visited with this laptop i have now.. so how in heck does my login info get kept? serverside of course.
in the end you are going to either remove the pcs ability to delete cookies a la 1984 george orwell novel, or give up trying to make us keep cookies and temp files. If i kept them my internet connection would die anyway. Often it is that i cant connect to internet unless i delete all temp files cache and cookies.. so then when i go to google my page is all in Thai, and go to msn this stupid pop up comes up in thai asking me if i ching chiong ping pong pampadopop pampu?
now how in the world will my mum know what the stupid pop up is asking nor which option to select.
I have posted about this before.
Please find a solution or stop setting things automatically to the language of that region
best solution for an easy workaround
in Thai language selection optionsd change the text which is visible in the tickboxes from 'ภาษาอังฤษ' to 'ภาษาอังฤษ' /English'!!!
at elast this way both Thais and English speakers will both understand the language options
the same goes for thai/arabic, thai/cyrillic and al other permutations which apply
if you use your brain to think for a moment, it is more likeley that an English speaker will want to change ghis search settings to english than a thai speaker.. so why is the tickbox for english and indeed all languages displayed inb only thai (or in arabia only arabic, in russia only russian etc)???
Put the tickboxes on search settings language options in the language that is displayed in each tickbox
interface language dropdown must say (using Thai/English as an example.. this applies to all languages) the following;
if it is currently in english; 'ไทย/Thai' and if it is in Thai currently then 'อังกฤษ/English' etc... this is what you are blinkered on and haven't thought of.. its so obvious even a ten year old should be able to figure it out.. you are well paid in google now use your brains a but better and don't assume we are all multilingual.
related;
