Google Japan in English

[bill]

I can't duplicate it now, but this morning on my home PC I typed in 'google.com' in the address bar of my browser and I was redirected to the google.co.jp page. I'm used to this redirection because of my IP, but today it was different. The entire page was in English. Even the Google logo at the top read "Japan" instead of the usual "Nippon" in Japanese characters.

Of course now I can't replicate this on any of my machines at work and I'm beginning to think I'm losing it. Has anyone else seen this?

[bill]

Just me?

[bill]

It may just be me, but at least I got a screen-shot of it this morning. ;) I clicked through to Google News, and I get the news in English, but the URL is http://news.google.co.jp/. Previously if I had wanted Google in English I would have to go to the .com site. This is an interesting bit of localization here. I wonder if it extends to other language groups as well. There are plenty of Chinese and Korean speakers here that could benefit from this as well.

[effisk]

I get Google.co.jp in French here.

It reads "Google Japan" in English but the rest of the page is in French. To see the homepage in English I have to go to [google.co.jp...]
and for the Japanese version: [google.co.jp...]

You will also notice that the Google logo isn't always one picture including the country name; it can also be made of the arrangement of three pics combined with the text of the country.

For example, when you see "google japan" with the nippon characters, it's one picture; when you see it with the latin characters, it's made of 3 pics + text "japan".

[effisk]

and to get google.co.jp news in English, simply go to [news.google.co.jp...]