
Chrome redirecting to blank.html on search - javajosh
http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/websearch/80GcWKQBZhs
======
pkasting
Regarding all the suggestions to change search engines:

Deleting the Google search entry is not an action that can easily be undone,
and it will have drastic consequences, such as permanently disabling
suggestions and instant for omnibox searches. Creating an alternate entry with
the same URL does NOT suffice -- you can't manually enable any of this
functionality on the alternate entry.

If you're having this bug, I suggest NOT doing this. Either sit tight until we
fix, or if you do create a different entry, KEEP THE ORIGINAL so you can
switch back once the fix is out.

\--Peter Kasting, Chrome team member and owner of the Omnibox

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
That sounds anti-competitive. So is there a reason other search providers
aren't being allowed the opportunity to support this functionality?

~~~
jrockway
As far as I know, they are. When I type "en.wikipedia.org" and hit tab, I get
auto-completions for Wikipedia content. Same for Bing.

------
runn1ng
From the giant thread, user BolshoiBrit:

 _Found a work around:

Add a new a search engine in wrench >> settings >> search "Manage Search
Engines". Under "other search engines" add a new search engine using this
address for the URL <http://www.google.com/search?q=%s>

Name it "Google 2" or whatever you want. Works like a charm.

-B_

~~~
anonymous_mouse
I suggest trying DuckDuckGo, a search engine that doesn't track you. Same
instructions but replace the search url with: <https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%s>

~~~
Karunamon
Unfortunately DDG's results suck. Nobody really cares about Google's
'tracking', people use them because they work.

~~~
ghostfish
Interesting, what makes you say that DDG's results suck? I've been using it as
my primary search engine for a few weeks now and aside from it not including a
map in results unless you give it a very explicit address, I've found it no
worse than Google's results.

~~~
aw3c2
A online buddy of mine submitted <http://enjoys.it/duckduckgo/> a while ago
but he was "dead"/ghosted on HN right away.

------
pokoleo
StoneImp has a better solution altogether:

 _Lol, I figured it out. in the original google url box it has this for some
reason

{google:baseURL}search?{google:RLZ}{google:acceptedSuggestion}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}{google:searchFieldtrialParameter}sourceid=chrome&ie={inputEncoding}&q=%s

The trial is not capitalized! Convention got broken, lol. If you want your
omibox to work exactly like before

Go to Wrench >> settings >> search "Manage Search Engines". Under "other
search engines" add a new search engine using this address for the URL Name:
Google2 Keyword: google URL:
{google:baseURL}search?{google:RLZ}{google:acceptedSuggestion}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}{google:searchFieldTrialParameter}sourceid=chrome&ie={inputEncoding}&q=%s

Credit to BolshoiBrit for figuring out part of this, just wanted to publish
this one level higher to help people_

[http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/websearch/80Gc...](http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/websearch/80GcWKQBZhs)

------
sillysaurus
Here's a permanent fix:

\- Click on the wrench icon in the upper right. Click "Settings".

\- Scroll down to "Set which search engine is used when searching from the
omnibox."

\- Click Manage search engines

\- Scroll all the way down. You'll see three textboxes. Fill the three
textboxes in like so:

    
    
      Googol Googol http://www.google.com/search?q=%s
    

\- Press enter, so that it adds Googol to your list of search engines. Scroll
up and find it in the list, then click "Make default".

You now have a permanent way to search Google from within Chrome. Bonus: the
URL is clean... there isn't any embedded tracking code or any other junk.

~~~
bigiain
If you're going to go to that much trouble anyway, may I suggest using:

<https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=%s>

A little bit more privacy, a little bit less trackable (And, for this crowd, I
should point out it'll strip the search query from the referrer when you click
the search links in the ssl version of Google's SERPs - so the Google
Analytics (or any other analytics tools) won't have those inbound search query
strings. The website marketer in me hates it when people do that, the privacy-
loving-libertarian in me loves it…)

~~~
saturn
Unfortunately seems to be US-only:

> The server at encrypted.google.com.au can't be found, because the DNS lookup
> failed

thanks for the tip though, still going to go with this.

~~~
bigiain
Well, more "dot com domain only" than "US-only".

The dns magic underneath encrypted.google.com, www.google.com and
www.google.com.au shows that doesn't matter - all three are "in Australia" (at
the very least, within 21ms) from where I am (Sydney):

    
    
      [Bigs-MacBook-Pro:~] bigiain% traceroute www.google.com.au
      traceroute: Warning: www.google.com.au has multiple addresses; using 74.125.237.87
      traceroute to www-cctld.l.google.com (74.125.237.87), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
      1  192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1)  3.558 ms  1.766 ms  1.582 ms
      …
      8  syd01s06-in-f23.1e100.net (74.125.237.87)  20.318 ms  20.009 ms  20.457 ms
      
      [Bigs-MacBook-Pro:~] bigiain% traceroute www.google.com
      traceroute: Warning: www.google.com has multiple addresses; using 74.125.237.81
      traceroute to www.l.google.com (74.125.237.81), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
      1  192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1)  1.962 ms  3.753 ms  1.618 ms
      …
      9  syd01s06-in-f17.1e100.net (74.125.237.81)  19.927 ms  20.220 ms  20.404 ms
      
      [Bigs-MacBook-Pro:~] bigiain% traceroute encrypted.google.com
      traceroute: Warning: encrypted.google.com has multiple addresses; using 74.125.237.100
      traceroute to www3.l.google.com (74.125.237.100), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
      1  192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1)  17.068 ms  8.808 ms  1.609 ms
      …
      8  syd01s12-in-f4.1e100.net (74.125.237.100)  21.235 ms  20.064 ms  19.237 ms

~~~
recoil
If I search for something where I might expect a regionally-customised result,
like "newspaper", I get "The Sun", "The New York Times" and "The Guardian"
from encrypted.google.com, but I get the SMH, "The Australian", etc. etc. from
a regular google.com.au search.

~~~
nightpool
I think that's a general feature of encrypted, no location customizations.
(I'd have to double-check to make sure though)

------
lambda
Why do dozens of people feel the need to say "+1" and "me too"? What could
they possibly think they are adding to the discussion?

~~~
JoshTriplett
Because the bug-tracking system doesn't have a noise-free way to say "this
affects me too", the way that bugzilla and launchpad do. And "this affects me
too" can potentially provide useful information, to gauge how many people an
issue affects and thus what priority to give it.

~~~
dfc
Your answer explained why it is helpful to google. It does not explain why
individuals post "me too," or why people are posting "me too" here on the HN
page...

There is a similar behavior here on HN with nice- page / I-agree / congrats
posts. I'm wary of a general guideline that I should only post to HN if I
think the karma reward will be greater than X, but more often than not I think
it helps make sure any of my posts actually increase the numerator in the
SNRatio.

~~~
tjoff
His answer explains that as well.

Since the per post karma have been removed the only way to show you agree is
to write an "I agree" post. If I upvote it only the author will see that
someone upvoted it, but it is also information that is valuable to others.
Hence, the only way to truly support a comment is to write a "me too" or try
to rewrite "me too" into some rambling as if you had something else to
contribute with but don't (which is arguably even worse).

Not defending it or saying that hiding the per post karma is bad, but it is
understandable and one of the drawbacks of hiding the per post karma.

~~~
politician
"Me too" is often used as a way to bump a forum thread back to the front page
of forum software so that mods and others can have time to participate before
the thread rolls off into murky ancient history. For instance, you very often
see this in game forums.

Now, my pet theory is that game forums seeded this behavior, and now more
people use it even on forums where it is technically unnecessary.

That said, I wonder what the game theoretical explanation is.

------
chaffneue
Same problem here. Seems to happen when you're in a logged out state. Wonder
how QA missed this. Maybe we can help out, go star this issue in the Chromium
bug tracker in case it affects the FOSS edition as well.
[http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=84679&...](http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=84679&q=blank.html&colspec=ID%20Pri%20Mstone%20ReleaseBlock%20Area%20Feature%20Status%20Owner%20Summary)

~~~
sses
That's a different bug. The problem people are seeing today is a redirect to
google.com/blank.html which is of course a blank page.

Edit: ah I see reports further down that bug mention blank.html

------
mattdeboard
This explains why my sleepy little bug report here
<http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=84679> was blowing up my
inbox this morning.

------
chrismealy
Me too.

I've been getting a lot of redirect timeouts on google searches the last
couple of months. Their link tracking is flaky. Irritating as hell.

~~~
j_s
Hopefully the author of the Undirect extension will update it to work (remove
redirects from search results), but it seems like a constant battle that he
doesn't have much incentive to keep fighting.

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dohbiijnjeiejifbgf...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dohbiijnjeiejifbgfdhfknogknkglio)

------
binarycrusader
Driving me crazy; just started happening tonight.

Found the only way to get it to stop was to quit the browser completely and
restart or to open an icognito window.

I'm using Version 20.0.1132.47 beta.

------
dfischer
I'm surprised the top comment isn't more along the lines of "wtf went wrong"
rather than a +1 me too.

Seriously, it seems this is a huge fuck up that probably costed millions and
millions of hits worth of traffic. 1 hr of time when users got redirected to
blank.html?

What happened?

------
javajosh
Disabling all extensions and restarting didn't help me - however, incognito
mode did. (And so did Firefox :)

------
prophetjohn
Happening to me, too. When searching directly from the address bar, it appears
to be loading my Google search results and nothing ever comes up. Going to
Google directly and search is still fine.

It appears to be Chrome's ability to translate your text into a search query
string. For instance, if I just type "y combinator" in to the address bar, it
craps out. But if I type "google.com/search?q=y+combinator" it behaves as one
would expect.

------
factorialboy
Happened to me. A browser restart "fixed" it.

~~~
factorialboy
FYI Xubuntu, Chrome Version 20.0.1132.47

------
Variance
I just had to shut down my chrome a few minutes ago and restart because I have
persistent issues with tabs becoming unresponsive, where you can still scroll,
but you can't click on links or highlight anything. The tabs either refuse to
close entirely or take several seconds to close.

I know that chrome is supposed to be more robust by isolating the the
processes of each tab, but my entire chrome hangs for 10 or 20 seconds at a
time nearly once a week. I love the browser, because it _feels_ very
lightweight, but these issues have been dampening that feeling lately. I don't
have any exotic plugins and I've got a new computer, so I figured I'd share
that chrome is by no means as great for everyone as it is for most people.

------
v33ra
Same problem here. Switched to DuckDuckGo as the default search engine and now
it works fine.

~~~
chubs
You know, i was just wondering if the bing team had noticed a spike in traffic
as people switch their default searchers today? DDG as well, i guess. I'd love
to see gabriel weinberg do a write-up about his stats for today :)

~~~
gsa
DDG's traffic stats are publicly available:
<https://duckduckgo.com/traffic.html>

------
demodifier
Going to Google.com and disabling Instant Search, searching for something and
then enabling it back worked for me. Now, searching from the address bar on
Chrome works fine and am no longer redirected to blank.html.

------
powerslave12r
Man, I should have waited before clearing out my history.

BTW just deleting and adding your own search engine worked for me:
'<http://www.google.com/search?q=%s>

------
3JPLW
Hidden in that long chain are some folks suggesting that turning off instant
search fixed the problem. Don't know if that's actually the problem, but it
may help those of you experiencing the issue.

------
kevinsd
Closing and restarting chrome seem to fix the problem for me.

~~~
emeraldd
I ran into this a short while ago and restart seems to have fixed it for me as
well. Odd

------
gourneau
It took me around 3 failures to just switch to duckduckgo.

------
vrishabh
I was facing the same problem since the last half an hour. Clearing the cache
since the beginning of time worked for me.

Mac OSX Lion. Chrome Version 21.0.1180.15 dev

------
glennos
Crazy that this broke, but an interesting reminder of how annoying browsers
were when you had to type "www.google.com" before you could search.

~~~
rlu
Well let's not forget that before this the norm was a search box that was
placed next to the address bar. Just saying :p

~~~
pyre
Right, where (in Firefox) you could just hit ctrl+k / cmd+k to get the cursor
into the box (as opposed to ctrl+l / cmd+l to get to the omnibox). Not that
much more difficult.

------
rel
Dev build does not seem to be having this issue

(21.0.1180.15 dev-m)

------
epaga
Turned off Instant Search and everything works now (except for Instant Search
which I can live with until they get it fixed).

------
oleyb
Everything works fine in Chrome Canary (the nightly builds) but it's broken in
the standard Chrome release for me.

------
luzon19
It is FIXED now. :)

~~~
19_ploT
Yes, the issue has been updated and it seems fixed now.

------
United857
Not sure if it's related, but as I write this, Google Drive is down for me;
gives a "This app is currently unreachable" error.

Perhaps some piece of Google identity/auth infrastructure is down right now.

------
petercooper
I'm having this issue too. Numerous people are finding that turning off
"Instant Search" in Chrome is fixing it, but it was a non-starter for me.

~~~
vyrotek
Odd. I actually already had mine turned off so I tried turning it back on and
it looked like it was working. I then turned it back off and it continued to
work.

------
jiipee_2
Annoying bug. I was sure as hell I have a trojan. So, I am actually happy that
people say "me too" without reporting any other problems.

------
zalew
and on linux:

Retrieving bug reports... Done

Parsing Found/Fixed information... Done

grave bugs of chromium (20.0.1132.41~r143299-1 -> 20.0.1132.43~r143823-1)
<unfixed>

#679827 - chromium always hangs on <https://github.com>

#679848 - chromium: everything related to chrome:// is broken

Summary: chromium(2 bugs)

------
markab
i fixed the problem by completely resetting my cookies. I opened up the
browser in Incognito and it worked fine, so I figured I'd give a full history
clear of history, cache and cookies.

I'm not sure why it worked, but it did. (For me)

------
jervisfm
oh man, I have been experiencing this very issue for a few hours tonight and
googling the issue led me to this thread. Good to know I was not the only one.
The suggested fix seems to resolve the issue for me as well.

------
jezclaremurugan
Why don't people use firefox instead?

~~~
neotek
I can't speak for anyone else, but I find Chrome faster and less cluttered.

------
TheDigitalNInja
frustrating as hell, just giving bing a try for the night until they get it
fixed.

------
Karunamon
Just started happening to me, thought it was some weird glitch with the Win8
preview. Good to know.

------
vyrotek
Yep. Happening here too. Apparently I don't use that feature as much as I
thought.

------
drivebyacct2
Weird, haven't had an issue on any of my three computers, all of which have
been running Chrome all day and are up to date.

Of course, they're all on the dev channel. Ironic, this seems to indicate the
dev channel is more stable than the stable channel as I've never had any
problems like this before.

------
rsanchez1
Oh, didn't know this was a widespread problem. Happened to me as well. The
search results display for a fraction of a second then I get the blank screen.

