Google has announced that it will redirect country code top-level domain names (ccTLD) for its search engine to google.com. As stated in a blog post, the update is intended to streamline people’s experience with the search engine and will gradually be rolled out over the coming months.
The reason Google uses ccTLDs is to provide locally relevant results to the user. However, the company has improved its search engine to the point where ccTLDs are no longer necessary for this. Since 2017, users are able to see local results regardless of whether they use google.com or their country’s ccTLD. This is a pretty subtle change, so users may have not noticed.
Once the update is fully rolled out, there will be no need for us Malaysians to type google.com.my. While this change probably won’t be noticeable in the long run, Google has warned that users may need to re-enter some of their Search preferences during the process, although it did not specify which preferences.
The company also noted that the change will only affect what users see in the browser address bar and that the search engine will work the same. It also assured that the update will not change how it handles obligations under national laws.
(Source: Google)
