Firefox Google Search

yesterday if I typed something into the search bar in Firefox and hit return it took me to the search results.

Today it takes me to Google's Chinese homepage, with no results, just a blank search box.

Why?

[conspiracy]the Firefox search bar was somehow bypassing censoring filters, so they stopped us using it[/conspiracy]

[reality]It's broken[/reality]

Delete your cookies!

Google has the really annoying habit of reading your ISP no. and deciding which language you speak. They then store that in a cookie on your machine.

But then as all us old China hands know, everyone in China speaks Chinese and the rest of the world speaks English!

No, it's not just giving me a Chinese results page. When I use the Google search built into Firefox, if just doesn't give me the results - it sends me to Googles (Chinese) homepage, ready to do a search.

Roddy

wait!! you can see google in beijing?

Yes Google has pretty much always been available - it's been blocked occasionally and you can't access the cache, but apart from that its fine - although you may notice strange things happening on certain search terms.

Roddy

This is firefox related

Why with firefox i can read chinese characters on this website but if i go to any other chinese website i just get nonesense ( insert joke here), while with IE i get everything?

you can't access the cache

It's very easy to get around the block on Google's cache.

The cache URL for this site is http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:v4pLZN6W42QJ:www.chinese-forums.com/+chinese+culture&hl=en%20target=_blank which is blocked.

They block it by intercepting that "q=" in the search string.

Copy the link and change "q" to "%71" (the hex value) like this

http://66.102.7.104/search?%71=cache:v4pLZN6W42QJ:www.chinese-forums.com/+chinese+culture&hl=en%20target=_blank

It should now work!

with firefox i can read chinese characters on this website but if i go to any other chinese website i just get nonesense

Have you set up the language options in Firefox?

TOOLS - OPTIONS - GENERAL - LANGUAGES

Add the Chinese(s) of your choice.

Copy the link and change "q" to "%71" (the hex value) like this

Nice

I'm curious - one, how on earth did you realise that? And two, any other similar tricks?

Roddy

I'm afraid I can't claim genius status yet! I read it somewhere, but I can't remember where.

I had already did the tools/options/general/language thing which is why I find this so puzzling.

In response to the original question... I've been downloading Firefox at net cafes across Shanghai, and this is always something that comes up. Like liuzhou said, Google reads your IP address and sets a cookie depending on what country you are in. But for me it has always been just as easy to unset, by clicking the "Google.com in English" link on the main Chinese page. After that, a request for Google always takes me to the main page, and the Firefox search box starts working correctly.

Also, to liuzhou, maybe you read it here:

http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~takoyaki/archive/200412.html#p19

It doesn't seem to work for me anymore, though.