/s because, you know.
While on vacation google decided to switch me to chinese even though I was logged in with an account that was set to english for decades on a browser that didn't change. The only way to change that back is to go to your account settings, and all the links leading there are ... in chinese. Even once back home this language change persisted. At no point did Google ever get an `Accept-Language: zh*` from me or any other indication that I wanted to switch languages besides the IP I'm connecting from which means fuck all.
Hanlon's razor strikes again.
The other day someone here (ostensibly a site for tech people) argued that the `Accept` header is useless, we can all just put random query string parameters or extensions in the URL to tell the server what content type we expect back, so I wouldn't be surprised if Google developers simply fail to see the point of the Accept-Language header.
If you go to myaccount.google.com/language , you can remove languages you don't actually speak, or turn off automatically adding languages altogether. It doesn't always work for everything, but it's a good signal.
I agree there should be a way to force this better, but there's a bunch of work being done on it.
You can add a hl=en parameter to the URL, and most Google apps will respect it.
I live in a non-English speaking country.
The vast majority of people use their device in the local language, and for any browser to see the OS is set to - let's say, Thai - and then just proceed to send accept-language: en is just absurd.
The other possibility is that these people who can not understand English, somehow manage to use a device set to English language on a daily basis. Also, absurd.
Unless you can point to some kind of evidence that shows Accept-Language is set to English regardless of the host OS' language/region setting, there's zero reason to believe this claim.
> It's not that they cannot use English
Right, the entirety of non-english speaking, internet-using humans are able to read English, it's just a bunch of them choose not to, but only when it comes to using a webpage? Is that what you're suggesting?
Edit:
I just did some very quick testing of the theory that browsers will send the "wrong" Accept-Language header.
* Safari on macOS with preferred OS language set to English (Australian) sends `en-AU,en;q=0.9`
* Safari on macOS with preferred OS language set to Thai (and second pref of English) sends `th-TH,th;q=0.9`
* Chrome on macOS with preferred OS language set to English (Australian) for some reason sends `en-GB,en-US;q=0.9,en;q=0.8`
* Chrome on macOS with preferred OS language set to Thai (and second pref of English) sends `th-TH,th;q=0.9`
* Edge on Windows 11 with preferred OS language set to Thai (and second pref of English) sends `th,en;q=0.9,en-GB;q=0.8,en-US;q=0.7`
* Chrome on Windows 11 with preferred OS language set to Thai (and second pref of English) sends `th-TH,th;q=0.9`
Firefox is the one that can get it wrong, sometimes: in the macOS VM, I had already downloaded Firefox before setting the OS language to Thai, and the downloaded versions set a browser preferred language which doesn't change based on the OS language (the default is US English).
But when I downloaded Firefox using Edge in the Win11 VM, the language was already set to Thai, so I got a "Thai preferred" download link when I typed "Firefox" in the search bar, and thus the language string it sends is not surprising: `th,en-US;q=0.7,en;q=0.3`
So, again: without some evidence to show that somehow people who have no understanding of English, are using their computers or phones or tablets in English, I'm calling bullshit on this repeated claim that "non english user's browsers send requests for English language content".
In many counties, users have their OS/Browser settings set to English only, when they actually also speak other languages (or in certain countries, exclusively other languages). There's also a bunch of complexity in regards to spoken/written language comprehension, but I won't get into that here.
There is much more engagement when Google presents content in languages people actually know (or, rather, languages Google thinks they know), regardless of what their Accept-Language header is.
Unfortunately, I cannot present you with hard stats, as I no longer work there. I'm sorry that's unsatisfactory, and I'm not asking you to blindly trust the word of a stranger. Just wanted to offer up some insight into why the system behaves as it does sometimes.
Sometimes these people cannot switch the interface language of the operating system. For example٫ Windows Single Language edition forbids changing the language of the interface, and it is common in developing countries.