Google Rant

When I lived in the US I was able to access Google's American AND Canadian sites, as well as Google from other countries.  Now that I'm in Canada I can't go to google.com.  The page automatically switches to google.ca.

Yesterday was one of those days where I wanted to look at the American site.  A friend told me that I must check out the 4th of July doodle (later he sent me the picture in an email):

However, this is the doodle that I saw, the Hartland Covered Bridge in New Brunswick, which was on the Canadian site:

It's a nice picture but not what I was looking for.  I did a bit of research and learned that if you don't want Google to redirect you, type in the URL - http://www.google.com/ncr.  NCR means "no country redirect".  Now, I might have gone to the US Google site (but I'm not sure), but I still was not able to see the US picture.  I still could only see the Canadian picture.

I find this to be irritating and it feels like censorship.  Why can't I visit the Google site of my choice without being redirected?  It would be nice to have option to go where we want to go.