Google Chrome

[JIMJFOX]

Apologies if this is not the place but...

I'm in Thailand, have set my location to Thailand and allowed tracking;
for no discernible reason, when I open Chrome, I get the Google France
page. Downloaded a fresh copy of Chrome, replaced the existing but no
joy- still Google France! The appearance of the page is also distinctly
different, with Tabs showing up in grey...
Also, everything has slowed dramatically on my MBA.

Suggestions most welcome!

 

[KevinJS]

Are you using a VPN? That might explain the anomaly.

BTW, my own experience with Google Chrome leads me to recommend not using it under any circumstances. I downloaded it so I could use Hangouts, because Safari didn't allow it. The temperature goes sky high and the fans spin flat out as soon as I boot it up.

However, if you are not using a VPN and you really want to use Chrome, I'll go digging as soon as I can get to my Mac and see if we can figure out what's going on.

 

[KevinJS]

Done a bit of digging. If you click on the Menu button, top right of the Google Chrome window, and select Settings, you can manage your search engines from there. You need to change the string containing the URL so that it matches the top-level domain for the country you reside in. However, here's the problem. The top-level domain for Thailand is .th, so you'd expect Google Thailand to be http://www.google.th but it is not. So either Google doesn't have a presence in Thailand (unlikely), or there is another domain kicking around that I've not found.

I've tried changing the search engine to a couple of countries whose top-level domain I know, .fr for France and .co.uk for the UK and Chrome accepts the new page. I searched for Ford dealers and it was clear that Google was searching in the UK, however, the ads were still for Ford Canadian dealers.

Hope this is useful.

 

[KevinJS]

Just had a thought. Before I started messing around, I saved the original string. You'll notice that google.ca is not mentioned, so perhaps this is the string necessary to point to the local version of Google, whatever it might be. In any case, it's worth comparing to what you have, to see if there are any differences.

{google:baseURL}search?q=%s&{google:RLZ}{googleriginalQueryForSuggestion}{googlessistedQueryStats}{google:searchFieldtrialParameter}{google:iOSSearchLanguage}{google:searchClient}{google:sourceId}{google:instantExtendedEnabledParameter}{google:contextualSearchVersion}ie={inputEncoding}

 

[JIMJFOX]

No VPN. Had no problems running Chrome before. Maybe I'll just ignore it... France????

 

[JIMJFOX]

Got paranoid about being hacked or something- think I'll just ignore it!

That's a nice reel-to-reel you have- Toshiba 10" maybe?

 

[KevinJS]

Thanks. The deck is an Akai.

Yes, it does seem strange that it would choose France out of all the possibilities.

 

[Slydude]

@KevinJS Don't have an answer for the OP's quest but thought you might like to know the Hangouts plugin works with Safari. I had a few issues when I moved from the MacBook Pro to my iMac but got that ironed out. I'm actually running the Hangouts plugin that is one eversion back from the current one I think.

 

[KevinJS]

@KevinJS Don't have an answer for the OP's quest but thought you might like to know the Hangouts plugin works with Safari. I had a few issues when I moved from the MacBook Pro to my iMac but got that ironed out. I'm actually running the Hangouts plugin that is one eversion back from the current one I think.

Thanks for that info, Sly. Yes, Hangouts was originally only available on Chrome. It was later extended to Safari. I used to participate in a multi-person chat that involved large amounts of beer and several people in different parts of the world.

 

[Slydude]

I'm using Hangout for the Mac-Forums Sunday chats. When the last update was released it did not play nice with my iMac. I went back to the version on my MacBook Pro and it seems OK.

 

[JIMJFOX]

Also got Google Spain, Sweden, Thailand- now seems to have settled down to Google UK.
So I'll stick with that!

 

[Shilingford]

I don't think it's needed VPN. Myself is using Google Chrome for long onto my desktop. Working fine so far.