Inspired by /pd's discovery of accessing Google via ip, I decided to look at my Google just on IP
http://72.14.205.19/ it says Google English!
I tried the same thing in decimal
http://1208929555/ and it does not say English.....

thoughts?

http://1208929555/ redirects you to a Google-hosted domain, so what you see there is a normal Google home page (or your personalized one if you're being redirected to that.

When you visit the IP address, Google is actually hosting that page. Since it's not a recognised Google domain, it will automatically add "English" to the page. (I'm not sure why – presumably it's something to do with the way they detect languages for their localized home pages.)

This also happens for any domain that's setup to point to Google which they don't redirect (or if you add an entry in your HOSTS file that points to a Google IP) – for example:

http://www.ho.org/
http://www.jenniferwanderer.com/
http://www.seeabc.com/

(These domains were retrieved using the reverse IP lookup tool on the http://www.domaintools.com/ website.)

On this address I get my preferred browser language, which can be e.g. Chinese or English or...
http://72.14.205.19/