The Real Google.com.kw
Google today have released and pushed to the people of Kuwait their new Google.com.kw domain. If you have gone already to Google.com, you may have well noticed as I did you’re being redirected to the Google.com.kw domain instead. While this is not a Kuwait only search engine as we intended to do with Q8Ba7th, it is a global search engine biased for Kuwait results. Try searching for “العربي” for example on Google global and Google Kuwait:
Google.com Results
Google.com.kw Result
You can clearly see Al-Arabi sport club showing in first few results in Google.com.kw. Yes it is more targeted, if you wish to have such results, keep it your default search engine. I have to say however, I was not imporessed with Google’s “Do No Evil” way of pushing the new search engine in my face, and with an ugly Arabic interface. The side options link are barely readable, and getting English results from left to right is definitely not the best way to browse the results. Not what fairy tales would tell you about how Google takes +2 points difference in font size as a serious unforgivable mistake. The least they could’ve done is maintained my English interface. That way I won’t feel more confused.
I am also still wondering how can I set Google.com as the default search engine. I can go to Google.com.kw main page, click on “Google.com In English” link. However I want the default Google Chrome address bar to give me results from Google.com. How can I do that now?
WONDER IF: I also wonder if that’s got anything to do with Google.com.sa agent calling me to offer changing my Adwords account to Saudi Arabia billing address few weeks ago as Google has no presence in Kuwait, saying he can manage it that way. Was it an attempt to take away Kuwait Adwords accounts before they can take control over it? Maybe. But I wouldn’t care either ways.
Related Buzz Around The Blogosphere:
http://dr-mahbob.com/blog/2008/12/11/google-kuwait/
Popularity: 11% [?]
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Comments
I just opened my firefox and WTF! It first came in arabic, now the site is in english but redirects to .kw … ya3nee what ’3asib!
So what that means it searches related to Kuwait? How does Google benefit from that? or is that meant solely for our advantage!
Well, good news is that at least Google is throwing us crumbs.
Bad news, you can’t opt out? wtf, I know it’s pissing me the hell off in malaysia as it keeps redirecting me to google.com.my
Problem with that? When I search, I can’t see the prices of gadgets through Google Products anymore :(
Mahbob: Well what do you know? The pushing to .com.kw is gone! For me at least
maryam: I hate the pushing also. It seems gone however. Google benefits (as they think) by providing more and more focused localized results. Better results means happier users. Apparently they screwed up :)
3baid: I hope not by a lot :)
bojacob: So it’s long term thing? Its stopped redirecting for me but I dont understand this. We need proxy to Google. MOC must be happy now they can force filtering on Google Kuwait ;/
nemo: Good. someone likes it at least :>
Ansam: LOL, yeah. Sounds amature
MacaholiQ8: Yeah. Something just wrong about it in computer age.
If it pushes again you can pull it back by going to http://www.google.com/ncr
can always use google.com/ncr (no country redirect).
and for the search bar (fully works):
change .xml file in “program files/mozilla/searchplugins/google.xml”
google.com/firefox to google.com/ncr
http://www.google.com/webhp works better, can be done to the search bar as mentioned above, no problems.
Yes my friend they pushed and it seems we don’t have choice it always redirecting to http://www.google.com.kw !