Friday, July 24, 2009

Not All Of Google May Be Available In Your Country
By Tony Ruscoe & Philipp Lenssen

The name is “world wide web”, but it’s not always. What are some of Google’s services that will only work in one country, or a limited set of countries? (Unless perhaps you route around the block – geolocation by IP, as it’s often implemented, is not an impossible hurdle.) Here are some examples:

• At YouTube, sometimes videos will read “This video is not available in your country due to copyright restrictions.” Maybe you can click on the frontpage thumbnail, but then the video won’t show.
• At Google Books, even for stuff which is in the public domain in a country where you access the book, sometimes you’ll hit a block. For instance, when I want to read “The Comedies of William Shakespeare”, I’m seeing the text “No preview available” here from Germany. (Checking through a US proxy, I can see there’s a preview coming up.)
• Google China has a music service where you can listen to songs. It’s linked straight from the google.cn homepage. But what if you click on it from outside China? You’ll get the message “Music streaming/download services are not available in your region”.
• Google logo doodles are often country-specific. (This week’s comic doodle reportedly only shows in the US, for instance, unless you call up a special URL.)
• Google Video sometimes brings up country-blocks for specific videos. At one time, I saw the message “We’re sorry, but this video is not available in your country.” (While Google Video still had upload functionality linked from its homepage, you could also select target countries from a dropdown box for your content.)
• Users of Google China are in the position of having quite a bit of features and content blocked for them. For instance, Google recently removed the “sign in” link from their homepage, they stopped offering auto-completion on the search box, you can’t disable safe-search, and they censor certain web results, images, or news sources. (Search for e.g. human rights, and you’ll find a censorship notice by Google at the bottom of the page. On a side-note, an ad says you can “Find human rights on eBay”, though.)
• When you enter www.gmail.com in your browser and you happen to be in Germany, you’ll see the note “We can’t provide service under the Gmail name in Germany; we’re called Google Mail here instead.” You can access Gmail here by typing mail.google.com instead. You can’t get a @gmail.com account in all countries, but need to settle with @googlemail.com in some places.
• New Google features and functionality are often initially offered in US English language versions of the interface only (like most Gmail updates) or on the .com domain (such as the new iGoogle layout). Although that’s not country-specific, it hides new things from non-English speakers.
• The Google SMS service isn’t available in all countries. The UK homepage reads, “Google SMS is currently not available in the UK. The service is still in beta, and we’re working hard to make it better.”
• Google Apps only supports the purchasing of the following top level domains: .com, .net, .org, .biz, and .info – all others need to be purchased elsewhere.
• Free giveaways often officially only apply to the US... although others say they received them anyway.
• Google says, “The Google Latitude web app currently supports iPhone/iPod Touch OS 3.0 or above. For now, it’s available in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and we hope to bring it to more countries soon.”
• Phone service Google Voice is only available for the US.

Do you know of other Google sites or features not available in your country?

Not All Of Google May Be ... by Tony Ruscoe & Phili ... | Comments (29)

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