Google Chrome disables initial search engine selection in Russia
That’s how Google Chrome welcomes you when you first start it. Good move in the “don’t be evil” style, isn’t it?
But there’s one country where this message doesn’t show up – Russia. Why?
The answer is the commit recently discovered in Chromium (which is upstream to Google Chrome):
$ svn diff -r84234:84235 http://src.chromium.org/svn/trunk/src
...
Index: chrome/browser/first_run/first_run.cc
===================================================================
--- chrome/browser/first_run/first_run.cc (revision 84234)
+++ chrome/browser/first_run/first_run.cc (revision 84235)
@@ -396,6 +396,14 @@
}
// static
+bool FirstRun::SearchEngineSelectorDisallowed() {
+ // For now, the only case in which the search engine dialog should never be
+ // shown is if the locale is Russia.
+ std::string locale = g_browser_process->GetApplicationLocale();
+ return (locale == "ru");
+}
+
+// static
bool FirstRun::SetOEMFirstRunBubblePref() {
PrefService* local_state = g_browser_process->local_state();
if (!local_state)
Index: chrome/browser/first_run/first_run.h
===================================================================
--- chrome/browser/first_run/first_run.h (revision 84234)
+++ chrome/browser/first_run/first_run.h (revision 84235)
@@ -141,6 +141,10 @@
// Returns false if the pref could not be set.
static bool SetPersonalDataManagerFirstRunPref();
+ // True if special circumstances should prevent the search engine ballot from
+ // being shown.
+ static bool SearchEngineSelectorDisallowed();
+
private:
friend class FirstRunTest;
FRIEND_TEST_ALL_PREFIXES(Toolbar5ImporterTest, BookmarkParse);This code was added in May 2011, linking to bug 81578. Note the comment about the “special circumstances [that] should prevent the search engine ballot from being shown”. What are these circumstances?
Russia is one a few countries where Google is not the leading search engine, losing to Yandex.
In addition to Russia, Google isn’t leading in South Korea, Czech Republic, China. Only in Russia Google decided to go against “Don’t be evil”.
Should we expect more countries to join the exception list?
