I visited France in the Fall, with my laptop, and Google became convinced I was in France and set my default to Google.fr. This was annoying for several weeks because I was too lazy to figure it out…by Googling. However, my co-worker, Peter Schumacher, told me to go to:

http://www.google.com/ncr

NCR = no country redirect

Voila! I hope this helps someone else.

Thanks Schubacca.