
Google's link to French privacy fine crashes watchdog's site - hepha1979
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/10/googles-link-french-privacy-fine-crashes-watchdog-cnil
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myrandomcomment
While I do not always hold Google (et. al.) blameless, sometimes I wonder why
companies keep doing business in France given their bureaucracy and knee jerk
policies designed to make everything "French" even when it does not make
sense.

[http://www.frenchtoday.com/blog/learn-some-french-
computer-t...](http://www.frenchtoday.com/blog/learn-some-french-computer-
terms)

~~~
laumars
Every country does that to some degree, even the Americans. One thing that
always niggles me is when I see an icon for the American flag for English in
language options on web sites. Given the number of countries which have
English as one of the primary languages (just off the top of my head:
Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, South Africa and, of course, the UK) it
seems slightly misplaced for an American developer to put an American flag for
English language options. Just as you wouldn't want a Mexican developer use a
Mexican icon for Spanish language options.

A lot of the examples in the article you linked to makes complete sense too.
In most of those cases the nouns are what's been translated and the proper
nouns have been largely left in English; as far as I know, that's how
languages normally work. That said, I don't see the point to the governments
alternative word for e-mail.

~~~
freehunter
If the software/web page is meant to be consumed primarily in the US when used
in English, would it make sense to put an Indian flag there?

~~~
lmm
The fact that you've got a language selection at all implies that it's an
international site. If it's a store or some such it would be a very unusual
American website that shipped abroad but not to Canada.

(I'm not sure what "meant to be consumed primarily in the US" even means; I
don't have national borders in mind when writing. For most sites it makes very
little difference which country a visitor happens to be from.)

~~~
freehunter
The US and Canada have the primary language of English. But Canada also has
French, and certain sections of the US have Spanish as a predominant language.
Just one example: If I have a US company that also ships to Canada, it makes
sense to have the US flag for English and the French (or Canadian?) flag for
French Canadian. It also makes sense to have the Mexican flag for the Spanish
option, because most of my Spanish speaking customers are likely to hail from
Mexico, with a small number from other Central American countries.

What would _not_ make sense is to have a UK flag for American customers, a
Spanish flag for Mexican customers, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo
flag for French, just to appease people who will never buy from my site. You
might not have national borders in mind, but it pays to know what language
your customers speak as well as what countries they are from.

~~~
laumars
In those instances I'd probably suggest going for a American/British flag [1]
or maybe the same thing with the American/Canadian flag?

[1] [http://thecultureur.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/12/e7qd6.jpg](http://thecultureur.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/12/e7qd6.jpg)

However I can forgive the use of the American glaf in your example as if
you're shipping software then that's a little different as it's a targeted
application rather than my example example of a public facing website which
would have people from all nationalities visiting.

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moron4hire
Headline a week from now: France Fines Google For Malicious DDOS attack on
Watchdog Site.

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martin-adams
I wonder if the Google cache had a copy.

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k-mcgrady
What's the likely hood someone at Google actually considered this would happen
and went ahead with it anyway? (or was the link a mandatory part of the
statement they were told to issue?).

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mseebach
First line of fifth paragraph: _The CNIL had demanded that the notice stay on
the site for two days._

Please, at the very least, give the article a cursory skim before knee-jerk
commenting.

~~~
k-mcgrady
The notice had to stay on the site - yes - but I wasn't sure if the link
(which was only a small part of the notice) had to be included as part of the
notice.

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stangeek
Errr, the links seems to be working fine?! Usual Guardian French-bashing?

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nmc
Please get your dates right. The outage happened on Friday the 7th of
February, and only lasted until Saturday afternoon.

Of course, the link is now working fine again.

~~~
jpadkins
The link was on google's homepage from Friday to Saturday.

