Force (not select the default, force) the language based on the country of the IP address (e.g. eBay). Which means that the 20% of French-speaking citizens of Switzerland are served a page in German, and people on holiday in a country they don’t speak the language can’t use the site;
Limit the available languages too much based on the country it serves. Until recently, I couldn’t have Amazon.de in anything other than German, even though it’s the preferred country for Swiss users (there’s not Amazon.ch). English would have been useful;
Set 42 cookies to maximise turning visitors into products, but cannot be bothered to remember the language they selected between visits;
Assign the label “special character” to anything that is not A-Z, preventing you to type in your name or address.
It’s not limited to American developers, but:
Force (not select the default, force) the language based on the country of the IP address (e.g. eBay). Which means that the 20% of French-speaking citizens of Switzerland are served a page in German, and people on holiday in a country they don’t speak the language can’t use the site;
Limit the available languages too much based on the country it serves. Until recently, I couldn’t have Amazon.de in anything other than German, even though it’s the preferred country for Swiss users (there’s not Amazon.ch). English would have been useful;
Set 42 cookies to maximise turning visitors into products, but cannot be bothered to remember the language they selected between visits;
Assign the label “special character” to anything that is not A-Z, preventing you to type in your name or address.
Oh, the cookie thing bothers me, too! That's why I wrote a Tampermonkey script to go to the english version of Microsoft KB/Technet/MSDN sites.
Who thinks that an automated translation of a technical document helps?
This is so stupid.
Accept-Language
header was invented for a reason.