TheMadScientist - 10:29 am on Oct 24, 2012 (gmt 0)

I guess I should add...

Yes, it's news to quite a few people, and it's good to know, but is there really anything to complain about or get up-in-arms over?

So there's another tag we know Google doesn't use ... Okay ... They even say they don't because it's unreliable, so it seems like a good thing for quite a few people who don't know what they're doing, and for those who do...

If you want to build a proper webpage, use the HTML attribute so it can be identified by user-agents who use the info.

If you want to build a site that's more easily ranked and understood by user-agents that don't use the tag (some search engine(s)), put the files in a language keyed subdirectory or on a language keyed subdomain.

If you want to do whats best for all user-agents, do both...

I would think it's 'Web 101' to not only do both, but to identify the links with a lang attribute, so there can be as little confusion as possible about the language of a given resource and site structure, regardless of visitor type and what markup they decide to give credence to.