This past weekend when I started accessing the pages of my websites I noticed Google image ads were appearing in French instead of American. Not the text ads, just the image ads. Today when trying to access Google itself, I’m being redirected to the French version of Google, and any attempt to access Google’s tools gives me a French version as well. This problem is isolated to Google.
I checked the IP assigned to my ISP account and noticed that it has been changed. Great! That should make for a lot of changing permissions based on the old IP address! Anyway, a check of the IP at ARIN has my new IP assigned to a blackhole at Internic. That appears to indicate that the IP has been newly assigned to my ISP and Google has it listed as an assigned IP to a French entity (who probably had it before.)
I think if Google wants to use IP identity then that identity should be over-ridden for logged in visitors. I have an account with Google… I always use the English version. That should over-ride any attempt to assign by IP a country of origin. Now I’m faced with trying to access parts of Google in a language I can barely understand…
My thoughts.