For the past week or so, every time I access Google, either directly, or through the built in search tool in Firefox, I get redirected to the Spanish-language version. Apparently, I am not the only one with this problem.

On the surface this seems like a good idea. “Google.com” is such a ubiquitous location now, that many people around the world would probably type that in when it would actually be better for them to go to the language-specific site for their region (not that language is as closely tied to region any more, but still…). The weird thing is that Google lets you set your “preferences” that get stored as a cookie. The ip detection process seems to totally override that, which undermines the entire “preferences” service.

Anyway, if you are having the same problem, go here and send Google an email telling them your ip address and pleading with them to fix this.

Update: They seem to be responding to these requests pretty fast, although the fix within their system may take a while…

Thank you for your note. We recently updated our location files and we
understand you’re now being redirected to www.google.es. As you may know,
we normally redirect users in countries other than the United States from
Google.com to one of our country-specific sites (e.g. www.google.co.uk for
Google UK) to provide easy access to country-specific search features.