Languages in software

This is getting out of hand. More and more companies are assuming, that just because I live in Sweden I want to have Swedish localization in my apps.

Sure I do want the date format and the currency format. But I really do not want Swedish words in exceptions, menus or any message delivered to me by software.

I don’t want Swedish to be the primary language on google. I don’t want to have all the exception messages in .Net to be in Swedish (impossible to understand, and the documentation in Swedish is nothing compared to the documentation available in English).

Now when I select where to download IE8, I select Sweden since I assume its the closest download site. However when I do that I’m being punished by Microsoft which insist on sending me a Swedish version of IE8.

Please let language selection be based on user input. If a user says sure I want this in Swedish, its one thing. But just because my closest download site is Sweden? Just because I live in Sweden? Language should be select by the user, and it should be apparent to the user that it is language their selecting, not which country they live in.

Just to be clear, I’m not even Swedish, I just live here.