1 – trainline.com, for a UK-to-UK journey that I was considering later in 2026 is assuming that I want the prices in EUR rather than GBP (and I couldn’t find an option to change that). In the UK it would give me GBP prices.
2 – Google searching is giving me English Google generally speaking, but with Germany-centric results at the top (DDG doesn’t: yay!)
3 – The YouTube app on my phone gives me German-spoken adverts, which I guess doesn’t bother me so much as I do my utmost to avoid/ignore adverts and I’m not fluent in German, but from a capitalist perspective it’s a bit strange.
4 – Browsing my daily sites, one is the ‘explain it like I’m 5’ reddit, which comes up in English as usual but with a Google pop-up in the top-right corner of the page in German wanting me to sign into Google (using Firefox)
It’s like this awkward teenage phase of the Internet trying to be cleverer than having no idea / not factoring my location in at all towards an ideal scenario of knowing what my preferences would be when abroad, and right now I’m thinking that it would be better the way it was!
I guess at least my device(s) didn’t auto switch keyboard layouts!
Side note: My privacy settings lean towards personal privacy rather than me giving all the info out to $TECH_GIANT, so I’m pretty sure they’re just seeing my geographical position according to which ISP I’m connected with at any given moment.