
Tell HN: Google seems to have changed ncr (no country redirect) - dragop
A useful feature of google search is ncr, no country redirect, which prevents geolocation redirection to the localized home page. Useful if you travel a lot, only want results in English if you live in a non-English speaking country, and so on.<p>The url used to be<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;ncr<p>Unfortunately this seems to have stopped working recently (clear cookies and caches first for anyone using this to see). After not a little search effort as it&#x27;s either an unannounced change (or a bug?), you now need:<p>http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.google.com&#x2F;?gfe_rd=cr&amp;gws_rd=cr<p>Hope this helps anyone relying on ncr.
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currysausage
It used to be like this: Visit
_[https://www.google.com/ncr](https://www.google.com/ncr) _ once, and on
further requests, _[https://www.google.com/](https://www.google.com/) _ or
_[https://www.google.com/?hl=en](https://www.google.com/?hl=en) _ wouldn't
redirect to _google.de_ any more. Unfortunately, visiting
_[https://www.google.com/?gfe_rd=cr&gws_rd=cr](https://www.google.com/?gfe_rd=cr&gws_rd=cr)
_ doesn't appear to have this effect. Still a good workaround, so thanks for
sharing!

I wonder if this might have anything to do with that EU _right to be
forgotten_ thing. The EU would like Google to remove search results from
_google.com_ , which is obviously very undesirable for Google, so maybe they
try to appease the EU by making _google.com_ harder to access for Europeans?
Maybe the _Use Google.com_ link will be removed soon?

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3dfan
For me it works with just this:

[http://www.google.com/?gws_rd=cr](http://www.google.com/?gws_rd=cr)

In Firefox you can assign a keyword to a bookmark. So when you bookmark this
and assign keyword "g" then you can visit google.com by simply typing "g".
Very convinient.

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weinzierl
I use Google Search rarely but
[https://www.google.com/ncr](https://www.google.com/ncr) is still in my muscle
memory. Nowadays I just ddg.gg and in the rare case I'm not satisfied with the
results I add g! in the search bar. The g! seems to give me the same results
as [https://www.google.com/ncr](https://www.google.com/ncr). (I like to
consider this a feature and not a bug.)

To give you some perspective: I live in Germany but prefer to read programming
or scientific topics in English. My English is not so good but the amount and
quality of English content counterbalances this by large. When using Google
from Germany (google.de or google.com, doesn't matter what) looking for
English search terms gives me subpar search results.

There is another reason for avoiding local Google search (google .com or
google.de without ncr). From about October to mid December whenever I'm was
not logged into Google I could only search when I OKed a popup to accept
Google's terms. There was only an OK button so I could only search if I
explicitly accepted their terms or logged in (I did neither). ncr avoided this
problem. They stopped doing this but still nag with a big banner to accept
their terms.

Just to be clear: I'm not complaining. I just think that most HN readers are
not aware of this and some might prossible be interested to know how using
Google another country feels like.

The only use case I have for Google search is localized search. For example:
Yesterday I wanted to look up the ensemble of a local theater. There is
nothing that can beat Google in this regard.

~~~
dorfsmay
Note that I have found that if you log into a Google account to do all your
searches for a given topic, you actually get better results, e.g. searching
for ACL, getting results related IT vs. knees.

~~~
J_Darnley
Of course. Google will profile you and have a search for "make" return results
about the software rather than the verb. The only downside is that you have to
let Google profile you which is a pretty large demand if you ask me. I would
rather use a better keyword.

~~~
dorfsmay
I only login in Google for searches when searching IT and comp sci type
questions.

------
okasaki
I've always used
[https://encrypted.google.com/](https://encrypted.google.com/), which works
the same way (I think?) The URL is from before google even had https.

~~~
est
I use this domain with a special rule to disable javascript and cookies. Page
loads insanely fast!

------
fulafel
It's too bad Google ignores the browser's language preferences, this wouldn't
be needed if they weren't so broken wrt Accept-Language.

~~~
dorfsmay
country ≠ language

For example, you can get google.ca in French or English by changing your
browser Accept-Language.

------
tonyztan
Thank you so much! I was trying to use google.com/ncr the other day and it
wasn't working. No wonder. Just saved this one in my bookmarks.

------
mahouse
What really gets on my nerves is that I can't configure it to use google.com
when I search from the omnibox, I don't even know from where is it getting my
current country, I guess it's IP geolocation.

~~~
asuffield
I haven't looked at this explicitly, but I would expect that if you sign in to
chrome then it will follow your account preferences for which locality to use.
Does that not work?

~~~
r3bl
I prefer to have everything tech-related written in English, but with Google,
I constantly get some of their services translated into my local language. I
have to keep translating their services back to English.

------
doe88
I use this url to use google.com
[https://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en&ned=us&tab=nw&gws_rd=ssl,...](https://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en&ned=us&tab=nw&gws_rd=ssl,cr)

------
pinaceae
they optimize for locals, while killing usability for foreigners and
travellers. try using google in spain - even the results are worthless if
you're not a spaniard. local search results get prominence, which is hilarious
when searching tech terms.

------
kretor
Seems like they fixed this. It's working for me

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wslh
Also, the prize for the stupidest behavior was won by Google: adding your
country's suffix to a blogspot blog.

~~~
patio11
This is how Google managed to avoid having the entire domain made illegal in
some countries, most importantly Germany, due to wantonly hosting illegal
content: shard into per-country domains, ban the per-country illegal content
on their domain, and shrug regarding the other domains.

The particular issue was that Germany, for historical reasons, has
restrictions about what one can say about Naziism which are not compatible
with American notions of free speech.

~~~
StavrosK
Why redirect to the domain? Why not just block by geoip?

~~~
nostrademons
GeoIPs aren't 100% reliable - there's a small but non-negligible chance that
geolocating your IP will place you in a different country than you're actually
in. When faced with the choice between accidentally censoring legitimate
content that you have a right to see vs. accidentally letting you see content
that is banned in your country, Google would much rather let you accidentally
see the banned stuff.

~~~
StavrosK
But what's the benefit of adding another detection layer over the existing
one? If the GeoIP is wrong, it'll still redirect me to the blocked domain. If
I can change the domain and access it anyway, what's the purpose of blocking?

It doesn't make sense to me that they implemented GeoIP blocking by
redirection, as it only has added downsides.

~~~
nostrademons
It's an escape hatch. If they block outright, then if they block outright and
are wrong, a legitimate user cannot see content that they have a right to. If
they use a redirect, then a user - legitimate or illegitimate - can bypass
that block, but they have to explicitly take action to. Consequences are on
them, then.

Remember that Google's mission is to "organize the world's information and
make it uniformly accessible and useful". Their purpose is _not_ to block the
content at all - if it were up to only Google, they wouldn't have _either_ a
block or a redirection, you'd just be able to access the content. The country
redirects are the result of a negotiation with the country, where Google says
"Okay, if we did this, would it be acceptable" and the government says "No,
too permissive" and then Google says "Okay, what if we did this?" and then
finally the government says "Alright."

~~~
StavrosK
That makes sense. However, how do you get past the block? Changing the TLD to
com redirects me to gr every time.

~~~
nostrademons
I think that's what the ncr (No Country Redirect) parameter that the article
talks about does - it tells Google to not redirect to the appropriate TLD.

~~~
StavrosK
That was for google.com, but it turns out that it works for blogger as well!
Interesting, thank you.

