Set preferred language in Chrome and other Google services

Question

Whenever I'm abroad and access Google's search (via Chrome browser, on my own laptop) or other Google services, they are presented to me in the local language. How can I get Google services displayed in English and instruct Chrome to use google.com (instead of the country-specific site)?

My language setting in Windows is English, so Chrome should already use this by default, and I've also set my language preference in iGoogle to English (U.S.), yet if I'm in France, for example, my searches take place on google.fr and sites like the Google News are in French.

Chrome tries to be helpful by suggesting to translate these pages for me, but it would be far better to direct to the original English version of these sites in the first place.

How do I fix this?

EDIT

This answer to a related question fixed the search issue. However, other Google services, such as Blogspot, still insist on sending me to their localized version.

Answer 1

You can enter www.google.com/ncr as the address. This will force Google to use the US version.

Alternatively, whenever you open a localized version of Google.com, there is a link at the bottom which says "Google.com in English". This is basically the link above.

If you specifically want to change this setting for Chrome, you should open Settings (Wrench icon --> Settings) and then click on Manage search engines on the first, Basics tab. You should have both Google (default) and Google.com to choose from.

Answer 2

Adding a 3rd language to the list of languages in Chrome solved the problem for me.

Originally Chrome was showing "English (United States)" and "English" but Google search results were in Chinese (I'm in Hong Kong). I added "English (United Kingdom)" and now the search results are in english.

Actually adding Afrikaans or any other language seems to solve the problem, so I guess the main thing is that there are multiple languages set.