Google en Espana

Of course, we knew what we were getting ourselves into. It’s a foreign country, after all.  (As Steve Martin once famously said about the neighboring country immediately to the North here :  “The have a differenent word for…EVERYTHING!” ) It’s the little things that take you by surprise.

For example, the first time I got my laptop on the Internet,  my Firefox default homepage (which I never got around to changing on this machine) was suddenly: “Pagina de inicio de Mozilla Firefox” and it showed me the familiar google search page with a minor change, the button under the search terms is now labeled “Buscar con Google”.  Huh… go figure.

Similarly, when I load news.google.net (as is my custom to see what’s going on the the world), I get entirely Spanish language news (um, I mean noticias) sites.

OK, surely, those things should be expected, but the more interesting surprise came from GoogleMaps:

Map of the San Ignazio Barrio

There was no way for me to tell what was unusual when I first looked at this, because I didn’t know that all the streets of Bilbao are labeled with two names, a Spanish one and a Basque one.  The two names are generally fairly close translations, but unless you’re used to it, you won’t see the similarities.

Google maps shows the Basque names, not the Spanish ones.  An interesting choice, don’t you think?  On the other hand, it’s a bit dificil for the turistas because the Spanish names are much more prominantly displayed on the signage (at least, that’s how it appears to me).

In any event, I couldn’t help noticing the apparent political statement being made by Google with this choice.

Today was orientation day for the summer program, during which time, I  met my colleagues.  Two are from Chico State, both teaching business courses while most are from the local university:  Universidad del Pais Vasco, often just called UPV.  I suppose it would be more appropriate to use it’s other title: Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatearen, or for us gringos, University of the Basque Country.

In addition to the staff, there are roughly 25 American students from all over the US from New York City to Boise, Idaho.

Tomorrow is the first meeting of the class, here’s hoping it goes well!