Traditionally, Google has maintained a large number of country-code domains such as google.de or google.co.jp to better distinguish between American-English Google users and users who wanted localized search results.

Soon, users from all over the world won't be able to access any other Google Search domain than google.com. Attempts to load any of the country-code Google domains result in a redirection to the main google.com website.

Google announced the change this week on its The Keyword blog. The company says that its "ability to provide a local experience has improved" over the years and that it has become this good, that "country-level domains are no longer necessary".

The details:

• The change will roll out gradually over the course of months.
• Some users may be prompted to re-enter some of their search preferences when they are redirected.
• The change won't affect "the way Search works".

Google introduced a change in 2017 that levelled the search experience for users regardless of the Google domain that they used to access search. The experience and results were identical on google.com and any of the supported country-code domains. It did introduce a number of problems of its own, primarily if the location and intended results language of a user did not match up.

A visit to Japan and using Google Search there, for example, would return mostly Japanese results, even if you'd type the query in English.

This happens now

A user from France who types in google.fr will be redirected to google.com once the change lands. The new destination will, presumably, use a French interface and provide French search results to the user, unless preferences have been changed by the user.

The classic local Google domains continue to remain available, but their only purpose going forward is to redirect users to google.com. Google notes that the redirection does not change any of its obligations under national laws.

Closing Words

The change may look minor, but it is fundamental as it alters more than 20 years of search experience for some users. While it may not change functionality that is provided, it is likely that it will catch some users off-guard, especially since it has been announced only on Google's blog.

Google started to add AI-powered overviews recently to search as well, which you may still bypass.