Adventures in web globalization, since 2002
I began the Report Card back in 2003 because, at the time, there was nothing out there that focused specifically on the globalization and localization of websites. And, to be honest, most websites were not all that “global” yet; 10 …
For anyone interested in a truly global (and local) view of the world’s Internet users, I recommend spending a few minutes here. At a global level, it’s revealing to see that the leading search phrase was “India vs. South Africa,” …
Not a huge surprise given the lack of investment over the years and the rise of more full-featured competitors, but Google is shutting down its Translator Toolkit: Google Translator Toolkit launched over a decade ago to help our users, translators, …
Last year, I wrote an essay for Multilingual in which I noted that the world’s most multilingual website isn’t Google or Facebook or even Wikipedia. It is the website of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. As I noted in the essay: The JW.org website supports more than 675 written …
I had an OpEd published this week in the Los Angeles Times about the importance of languages — and the slow but steady increase in languages supported by the world’s leading brands… America’s biggest brands are increasingly multilingual
According to the 2019 Web Globalization Report Card, 32 languages is the “average” number of languages supported by the leading global brands.
A little more than 15 years ago, I began benchmarking websites for a new report I had in mind, tentatively titled the Web Globalization Report Card. The number one website in the first Report Card was a startup company by the …
Lunar New Year has arrived and, with it, the Chinese New Year (and related Asian New Year celebrations). As I’ve done a few times in the past, I thought I’d feature a few localized web pages from multinationals as they …
In 2008, Google launched a project called Knol. Remember it? It was designed to replace Wikipedia. Google apparently wasn’t happy that so many of its visitors were quickly abandoning it for this nonprofit wealth of information. But Knol died a …
A timely article in The Wall Street Journal (that I only recently got around to reading): “The future’s not here.” American business people once saw China as dynamic, exciting and wide open. Not anymore. To which I ask: When was China ever “wide open?” An excerpt: …
Google Translate is the world’s most popular translation tool. The company says it now translates 30 trillion sentences a year across 103 languages. The key data point here is the 103 languages. No other free translation tool comes close to …
A few months ago, I wrote an essay for Multilingual in which I noted that the world’s most multilingual website isn’t Google or Facebook or even Wikipedia. It is the website of the Jehovah’s Witnesses. As I noted in the …
I’m excited to announce the publication of The 2018 Web Globalization Report Card. This is the most ambitious report I’ve written so far and it sheds light on a number of new and established best practices in website globalization. First, here are …
I’m pleased to announce that Born Digital (in collaboration with Mitsue-Links) is publishing the Japanese edition of Think Outside the Country. The book will be available December 23rd and I look forward to promoting it next year! If you’re a …
In 2001, I published a report on website weights and their impacts on website performance. Why, may you ask, was I researching website weights all the way back in 2001? The great broadband divide At the time, in the United …