The internet is a weird, weird place

I’m convinced Google is fucking with me. It all started a few weeks back when I decided to check my personal email at work one day. I logged on to the website and it was all in German.

Having to know the fields in order to log on wasn’t necessary; I was able to navigate the website no problem.

I mean, seriously, “Nutzername and passwort”??

Luckily Google didn’t translate all my emails into German, so I was actually able to read them. Once I logged out of the account, everything returned to normal. I thought it was weird, but carried on and didn’t think about it again until a week or so later when I re-discovered the glitch while checking my email from work. 

About a week after that, it started happening when I was at home. About a week after that, it started affecting my search results; the entire webpage of results would show up in German. Most of the time Google would give me the option of translating the page into English. Thanks Google.

But, like the German glitch, the translator would glitch out too and wouldn’t always be available. I started having to learn the German words for “images” and “maps”. And when I looked up a map… that’s right… all the directions were in German.

It was getting increasingly difficult to find information on the internet, so I did what any normal person would do: I Google’d it.

And all the webpages were displayed in… that’s right… English.

Forgetting my intentions entirely, I spent the next five minutes trying to trick Google into thinking I was German. Suddenly the problem became that Google didn’t think I was German anymore. Google was having none of it. All English, all the time.

I decided that finding a solution to my problem was unnecessary since my problem no longer existed.

Until a couple days later, when the problem reared it’s ugly head once again. Since then, I haven’t had to get directions so having German Google hasn’t been too much of a pain in the ass. That’s why I haven’t tried to fix it again. Also, I’m lazy.

A couple days ago, I realized that this would make a fairly entertaining blog post. I started writing it up; one of the first things I did was go to my email account and screenshot the log in screen. More than halfway through this post, I decided to screenshot a results screen. I put in a dummy search term into Google and awaited the results.

Results… in English. Naturally. And now I’m waiting for it to go back to the German default, but it’s not. It’s all “Of course you’re English, why would I think you’re German?”.

It’s like Google knows that I’m writing about it and wants to really fuck with me.