Google.com Redirect Phenomenon

I’ve been having issues with Google trying to decide from what country I was visiting their site(s). Up until just recently, I was always landing on www.google.com. However, I now get redirected to www.google.de. I have nothing against the Germans or the German language, but it makes using Google difficult since I am not familiar with the language. I noticed similar issues with YouTube as well.

At first I thought there was an update to Firefox that changed some locale setting. But then I noticed I had the same issue on every computer regardless of which browser I was using. I assumed it had to be a problem with Google in relation to my IP, but I couldn’t find any confirmation until just today.

In a Google Groups discussion, a lot of users were reporting the same issue. One was able to get information from Google and relayed it to the group. Google uses location files to keep track of where an IP resides in the world in order to provide region specific services. Apparently, the files are not perfect and fortunately Google has provided a form in order to report any issues that are found.

http://www.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=ip

If anyone else is experiencing this strange phenomenon, let Google know so they can correct it. Even my brother on location in Afghanistan was being redirected to www.google.de.