Yahoo Quebec is 100% French. Yahoo Canada is 100% English. You click on "Français" on the Canadian site and it brings you the Quebec site with the Quebec content. You click on "English" on the Quebec site and it brings you to the Canadian site with the non-Quebec Canadian content. Think about that for a moment. Probably more "efficient". Pretend everybody in Quebec is French and everybody in the rest of Canada is English.
According to the 2001 census, there are 408,000 people in the Montreal area who have English as first language that is still understood. The total for the province is 557,000.
There are 133,000 francophones (as a first language) on the Ontario side of the Ottawa-Hull Metropolitan Area. A total of 486,000 in the province of Ontario and 234,000 in New Brunswick.
That is 1.4 million Canadians who have to chose between geography and language if they want to use the Yahoo site.
Blame the stupid Americans. But you would think that Rogers Cable, in a branding association with Yahoo that makes Yahoo their clients home page, would clue them in.
I guess not.
Ironically, the USA now has Yahoo sites in Spanish and Chinese!
Yahoo India is in 8 languages. The Switzerland site is in three. Yahoo Spain is only in Spanish (It's Catalan, Galician and Basque speaking populations are out of luck). The only situation that comes close to Canada's is Belgium. No Yahoo for Belgium. They can go Dutch, French or German.
Belgium doesn't have a Yahoo site but Quebec does! Quebec, in fact, is the only sub-country geographic region to get a Yahoo site, in the world. Ireland gets lumped in with the UK site, no Galic available. New Zealand inexplicably gets lumped in with Australia. Mauri speakers are out of luck.
I guess Yahoo took Steven Harper calling Quebec a nation seriously.
Yahoo! International
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