NationStates Jolt Archive

I've learned as I've made my way through the internet, that it seems mostly suited for Americans. When I search Google Images, around 75% of the time I get results that only Americans would find relative.

When I search social security, I find links to the American system.
When I look at how people do live events on the internet, they are mostly done to be convienent toward Americans
When I read text, the language seems to be more American-biased.

The internet just seems to be a tool to help Americans mostly, which makes no sense considering that the internet is an international thing.

My question, is the internet a bitch to you non-Americans? Or have you just learned to deal with it? Or does it not strike you at all?

I'm Canadian and it doesn't bother me. If i need to find a Canadian site, or one from somewhere else in the world, i usually don't have a problem locating one.

I'm in Aus...no trouble here

I've learned as I've made my way through the internet, that it seems mostly suited for Americans. When I search Google Images, around 75% of the time I get results that only Americans would find relative.

When I search social security, I find links to the American system.
When I look at how people do live events on the internet, they are mostly done to be convienent toward Americans
When I read text, the language seems to be more American-biased.

The internet just seems to be a tool to help Americans mostly, which makes no sense considering that the internet is an international thing.

My question, is the internet a bitch to you non-Americans? Or have you just learned to deal with it? Or does it not strike you at all?

I wouldn't argue that fact with, maybe cause America invented the internet. Again as Canadian it doesn't matter to me much, it just means that when I'm doing a Canadian related search I have watch my wording.

It does annoy me. Not so much as a Canadian, but when I am searching for sites in Spanish. There still isn't that much out there compared to English, American-centered stuff. I know that is going to change eventually, it just so happens that right now, those with the time and money to throw crap up here usually tend to be Americans. Just wait until the Chinese open things up though...

Take for example google. If I want to google something Australian I search google.com.au rather than just google Same with altavista.com.au There's also a Aust/NZ engine called anzwers.com.au so no probs for me. Besides 1/3 of the web is Spanish and 1/3 Chinese I'm told, it's just that you don't get these reults when you search with english words on an english engine looking for results in english...

I've learned as I've made my way through the internet, that it seems mostly suited for Americans. When I search Google Images, around 75% of the time I get results that only Americans would find relative.

Google has international portals. Try them (for instance the Swedish www.google.se) out! Also, you pretty much have to select that you want non-English content to find anything worth while.

You need to speak more than one language to experience more than the US dominated English parts of it. If you search in English and from a US portal, you will get US centric results.

I don't mind, because if you look hard enough you can still find the stuff you're looking for. Like Google.ca has a "Canadian Pages" only option when you search, so the internet is yes mostly biased towards the US, but that's simply because the US is the nation that uses the internet the most, it is the most powerful nation and it is the most publiscized as a result. But you can still find non-American sites, so 'tis all good.

I've learned as I've made my way through the internet, that it seems mostly suited for Americans. When I search Google Images, around 75% of the time I get results that only Americans would find relative.

When I search social security, I find links to the American system.
When I look at how people do live events on the internet, they are mostly done to be convienent toward Americans
When I read text, the language seems to be more American-biased.

This is because you are only visiting the English-speaking portion of the internet. And besides, the USA calls its old age welfare program "Social Security" but other English speaking countries have other names for their welfare programs. I go to http://www.google.com.tw (Taiwanese Google) and run an image search for "社會保險" ("Social Security" in Chinese) and I get only China/Taiwan related stuff.

I think i'm up to 2000 posts now.

The international community can create sites just as easily; so, isn't it your own damn fault? Also, just search for "English social security" or whatever country you want. It's what I have to do with the Libertarian party when I don't want the English one.

Well ... ever since Al Gore invented the internet, it has been a bastian of US propoganda and ....

Ok I'll stop there.

You want a real buggar? Try finding decent Muslim websites. Information about Islam that isn't tainted by Western Islamophobia but is still in English. It's a tough find. Do a Google on "Islam" and you're going to find 25,000 pages proclaiming "Muhammed was a pedophile!" to every 1 page of real information.

I've stumbled across some places like islamicity.com and whatnot, but yeesh! More Muslims need websites!

As I speak, read and write English, fluently, being of British descent, the linguistic side is not a problem. There are irritations when you encounter servicessuch as the Internet Public Library which are not available outside of the USA. Equally most on line purchases are complicated by shipping costs and currency conversion.
Other than that, no, not really. If I want things specific to one country I use the nationality code in the domain name as a filter in google. This eliminates the irrelevant results.

I've stumbled across some places like islamicity.com and whatnot, but yeesh! More Muslims need websites!

More muslims need freedom of speech!

Well ... ever since Al Gore invented the internetwhat makes you think Al Gore invented the Internet?

what makes you think Al Gore invented the Internet?

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.htm

what makes you think Al Gore invented the Internet?

Because he said he did...

http://www.sethf.com/gore/

Regards,
Gaar

what makes you think Al Gore invented the Internet?

It's a joke, silly.

Poor Al Gore. Best president the US never had.

Because he said he did...

http://www.sethf.com/gore/

Regards,
Gaar

Did you read your own link? It proves he didn't.

More muslims need freedom of speech!

Since the majority of Muslims live in countries where Freedom of Speech is a basic right, I think we're ok on that front. :)

Because he said he did...

http://www.sethf.com/gore/

Regards,
Gaarwhat makes you think he said he did?

Since the majority of Muslims live in countries where Freedom of Speech is a basic right, I think we're ok on that front. :)

Sure, tons of free countries on these lists:

http://members.tripod.com/arabicpaper/country.html
http://islam.about.com/library/weekly/aa120298.htm

/sarcasm

http://islam.about.com/library/weekly/aa120298.htm
/sarcasm

Mmkay ... "Africa" and "Asia" are continents, not countries There are lots of countries in Africa and Asia that are free speech places.

In the 2nd graph, the top 10 are free speech countries.

Mmkay ... "Africa" and "Asia" are continents, not countries There are lots of countries in Africa and Asia that are free speech places.

In the 2nd graph, the top 10 are free speech countries.

Indonesia? Pakistan? Iran? Turkey? Iran? Egypt? Nigeria? Algeria? China?

Indonesia? Pakistan? Iran? Turkey? Iran? Egypt? Nigeria? Algeria? China?

Amazing, ain't it?

I know ... the US thinks it has a lock on "Freedom of Speech", but it really doesn't.

Shit, man, there was a movie recently put out in Egypt that showed the police as brutal and even had a homosexual head of police! It went right past the censors.

These countries are more free than you might think.

Amazing, ain't it?

I know ... the US thinks it has a lock on "Freedom of Speech", but it really doesn't.

Shit, man, there was a movie recently put out in Egypt that showed the police as brutal and even had a homosexual head of police! It went right past the censors.

These countries are more free than you might think.

Bull crap. Read up on Amnesty International's reports on them - those countries do not have freedom of speech, they do not even have the semblance of it.

I wouldn't argue that fact with, maybe cause America invented the internet. Again as Canadian it doesn't matter to me much, it just means that when I'm doing a Canadian related search I have watch my wording.

America has indeed invented the internet - but NOT the world wide web (that was CERN,Europe), which is where all those webpages are found. So thats not a real explanation...

Did you read your own link? It proves he didn't.
Because "created the internet" is so much more humble. In reality he heavily backed the project that spawned the internet.

If I may dust off this old chestnut:


Americans annoyed by "All this international shit" on internet. (http://www.satirewire.com/news/0010/international.shtml)

My question, is the internet a bitch to you non-Americans? Or have you just learned to deal with it? Or does it not strike you at all?
It was gennerally invented for Americas purposes.
Shit if it wernt for it id be smoking P or something sure some of you are doing both right now.LOL

I wont kill America because we have NS.
For all the shit on here Porn Spam Racial groups it aint to bad. ;)

I've learned as I've made my way through the internet, that it seems mostly suited for Americans. When I search Google Images, around 75% of the time I get results that only Americans would find relative.

When I search social security, I find links to the American system.
When I look at how people do live events on the internet, they are mostly done to be convienent toward Americans
When I read text, the language seems to be more American-biased.

The internet just seems to be a tool to help Americans mostly, which makes no sense considering that the internet is an international thing.

My question, is the internet a bitch to you non-Americans? Or have you just learned to deal with it? Or does it not strike you at all?


As we learned in the 2000 presidential campaign, Al Gore invented the internet. It wasn't any help to him, so why should it be different for you? ;)

One thing to note about most search engines is that they only search a fraction of the 'web', there is literally tonnes of stuff out there that google et al don't know about; also things like google.com will predominatley index English pages, and since America is has the largest English speaking population* most of the pages will be American centric...

*I just made this fact up, I hope it's correct...

Using google and about 20% of my knowledge of the french language, I came up with this:

Results 1 - 10 of about 13,000,000 for je suis.



8/10 on the first page were in french.





helpful? Not at all.

I've learned as I've made my way through the internet, that it seems mostly suited for Americans. When I search Google Images, around 75% of the time I get results that only Americans would find relative.

When I search social security, I find links to the American system.
When I look at how people do live events on the internet, they are mostly done to be convienent toward Americans
When I read text, the language seems to be more American-biased.

The internet just seems to be a tool to help Americans mostly, which makes no sense considering that the internet is an international thing.

My question, is the internet a bitch to you non-Americans? Or have you just learned to deal with it? Or does it not strike you at all?

Interesting fact, it is the UK with the most domains in the world, followed closely by Germany. America does have a lot of sites of its own, but very few are ".us" domains.

I've learned as I've made my way through the internet, that it seems mostly suited for Americans. When I search Google Images, around 75% of the time I get results that only Americans would find relative.
This might help you understand the reason:
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
As you can see, the US accounts for more than 1/4 of internet users worldwide. I'm sure if you went back a few years, this would have been even higher - thus more web pages have been written in America than anywhere else. Look also at Internet penetration of population (oo-eer!). Most ppl in the US have access to the internet - which means more usage, and thus more popularity with American pages.
Another factor is the sheer size of the US. Most business probably use the Internet more than in other smaller countries (like Britain), simply because they need to, to keep in contact with offices through-out the US.
Also while a 1/3 of the Internet population are in Asia, you're not looking up Chinese web-pages, are you?

Finally, if we're to simplify the above table to just English speaking countries (US Canada, UK, Oz, NZ), they would have approx 1/3 of the internet users worldwide. Of that 33%, 24% (trust me I just added them up) are US. 24/33 = 73% approx. Which is very close to your 75% of webpages you get are American.

So there you go.