Arun Stephens

In my (it seems) continuing series on things that work in the US but not in the UK, Apple’s new iAd network doesn’t seem to be serving ads to people in the UK.

I am not sure if Apple are actively selling inventory in the UK, or if they even have plans to in the short term.

I really wish these American-based companies would clarify when things are U.S. only. Apple said that they had a lot of ads, but I haven’t seen one. So if I had created an app with a primarily non-U.S. audience, hoping to monetise it with iAd, I would be very disappointed.

Apple aren’t the only ones that have a habit of forgetting 6.3 billion people. At Google I/O, they said that everybody attending would have access to AdSense for mobile (which was in closed beta) but on signing up it said U.S. only. There was also a big press release saying that Google Voice was open to everyone. But it was still limited to the U.S. Funny definition of everyone. They did correct it later, but still, it’s not on!

Today is 4th of July. There’s a Google doodle for it, but you wouldn’t know if you’re from the UK. Google.com is completely different if you are coming from a UK IP address. There is no 4th of July doodle, and what’s worse, you will get entirely different search results, with UK sites having more prominence. The results are slightly different from google.co.uk, as well.

I think it would be better for the regionalised Googles to be the same no matter where you come from, and that includes the US Google.com. What’s the point of the “Go to Google.com” link if going back there isn’t the real American Google?

I haven’t taken a look at Google.cn or Google.com.hk!

Rant over!

In an attempt to get to the top of people’s blog search results (give me a job, I’m a web developer in London), I thought I would point out that Google has a new colourful favicon. That is, the icon that appears in the address bar/favourites/bookmarks menu in your browser.

That is all!

Ever done a search for “search” on Google?