title: How should sites (Google and/or you) treat Accept-Language header?
body: <p>For a long time I've been not happy with the behavior of Google in the cases below, and  after accidentally noting that <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1011167/what-are-common-ui-misconceptions-and-annoyances/1011225#1011225">80+ other people</a> feel the same way (and 20+ people upvote the idea of Google bug report) I thought it's useful to tap into SO's wisdom on HTTP protocols and the web culture.</p>
  
  <p>This behavior appears every time I go to a different country and access <code>google.com</code> from my laptop or install a new browser. In many countries, including Vietnam, google automatically redirects to a localized version (e.g. <a href="http://google.com.vn" rel="noreferrer">google.com.vn</a>), the one I can't actually read so I scan it in a desperate attempt to find <em>Google.com in English</em> link. </p>
  
  <p>The first time it happened I was puzzled and spent some time finding out what could be wrong with my request headers; as I expected, my <code>Accept-Language</code> is always <code>en-US</code> or something like <code>en-US,ru;q=0.5</code>. Further tests with different IPs confirmed that they do IP geolocation, even when you are logged in. Later I learned there is a language query <code>?hl=...</code>, but still.</p>
  
  <p>So, my question would be: do you think this is reasonable and expected behavior, webculture-wise? Do other sites do it too? <strong>If you were to design a multilanguage site what would you do with a person who comes from <code>.vn</code> IP but with <code>en-US</code> language?</strong></p>
  
  <p>I imagine there are different approaches to IP geolocation:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li><p><strong>contra</strong>: I think this is impolite: I tell you explicitly what I want, 
  what's good about giving me something else?</p></li>
  <li><p><strong>pro</strong>: It could be that a person has just installed browser with the default language pack, without any idea about <code>Accept-*</code> headers, and still would prefer to see localized version of a website.</p></li>
  <li><p><strong>contra</strong>: And yet, non-techie people can easily change accept-language by installing a language pack. In fact, if you go to download Firefox, chances are you'll download the one in the language you want, with the accept-language header that respects your wishes.</p></li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Note that I read the <a href="http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14.4" rel="noreferrer">HTTP 1.1 specification</a> from 1999 but they seem to omit the question of how much the <a href="http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14.4" rel="noreferrer"><code>Accept-Language</code></a> should be really taken into consideration.</p>
  
  <p>I believe this question belongs to SO as a web-app design question. And I'm still thinking about filing a formal bug report (if I am correct that this behavior is far from web standards).</p>