14 replies to this topic

[1dmf]

is it me or has Google.com stopped working and only the sub domain of www.google.com now works?

I used to just type google.com (ok it then routed me to .co.uk) , but now when I type google.com I get Bing?

neat trick if Bing has managed to screw with G's DNS records, (ok I know my default browser search is set to MSN ) But it does seem odd that G! would make such a basic school boy error with their own 301 redirects?

Any one else noticed this lately?

[rustybrick]

is it me or has Google.com stopped working and only the sub domain of www.google.com now works?

I used to just type google.com (ok it then routed me to .co.uk) , but now when I type google.com I get Bing?

neat trick if Bing has managed to screw with G's DNS records, (ok I know my default browser search is set to MSN ) But it does seem odd that G! would make such a basic school boy error with their own 301 redirects?

Any one else noticed this lately?

Um, that sounds scary. I would check your computer for spyware or something. Both the www and non www of Google work fine for me.

[Randy]

You're running IE8 aren't you?

The reason I ask is that I noticed when I saw Google had finally 301 redirected their non-www address to the www version they're doing it the same way most do, with a stock, very short message that just says the page has moved. These short messages with content in the mere couple hundred bytes range can cause some browsers to do weird things because of what I consider to be a flaw IE that has pretty much always required web pages to be larger than 512 bytes in order to actually display the page. There is actually a Registry setting for this 512 byte threshold.

IE, prior to version 8 would simply not display a custom error page if it was less than 512 bytes. Or crap out if a redirect was less than 512 bytes.

In IE8 this behavior has changed. Now when it sees a page of less than 512 bytes it redirects the user to Bing.com.

So there's your spyware most likely. It's IE8.

What's the moral of the story?

For webmasters the moral is that your custom error pages and other redirects should be configured to be more than 512 bytes, meaning (I believe, though I've not looked at it lately) you can't use any of the standard Apache messages because they're all less than 512 bytes out of the box. Note also that if you have compression enabled it needs to be larger than 512 bytes after compression. If you neglect to do this IE8 is going to automatically send traffic from your site to Bing.com whenever users hit a 404 error or any other redirected page.

And people wonder why I've been disallowing IE8 to be installed on my computer...

FTR, some have reported non-domain queries being sent to whatever default search provider you have set up in IE8. Some who have say Google.com set up as their default search provider are still getting Bing.com for non-domain hits, strongly suggesting an NXDOMAIN hijack in IE8. While this may be related to your error/redirect experience, it's not quite the same thing since we know the domain hostname does in fact exist.

No matter how you slice it it's a flaw in IE. Always has been, always will be, and no I don't expect them to ever change it.

[Jill]

You always have the craziest things happening with your computer, 1dmf!

[1dmf]

- yup never rains where i'm concerned Jill.

I think you'd say I have bad karma, I just think everyone hates me

And yes Randy, i think you are right, as I am using IE8, i'm finding quite a few wierd things with IE8, on the surface it seemed to be better than IE7, but actually there's a whole load of wierd that goes on which never happened in any of their other browsers.

If all else fails I do have FireFox, but i actually like being taken to Bing when having typed Google, makes me chuckle, even if it's an extra click to get to G! now.

Go on MS stick it to G! , I'm not a fan boy of either by the way, i just like a good fight

Edited by 1dmf, 03 September 2009 - 10:44 AM.

[Jill]

Me thinks Google could sue MS for that if they're somehow doing it on purpose via IE...nasty nasty!

[Randy]

Maybe a lawsuit from someone as large and well funded as Google might convince them to change this wonky browser behavior IE has always had.

I somehow doubt it though.

[qwerty]

This would explain the comment in the source code of a 404 page I ran across earlier today:

HTML

<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>404 Not Found</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<H1>Not Found</H1>
The requested document was not found on this server.
<P>
<HR>
<ADDRESS>
Web Server at [deleted].com
</ADDRESS>
</BODY>
</HTML>

<!--
- Unfortunately, Microsoft has added a clever new
- "feature" to Internet Explorer. If the text of
- an error's message is "too small", specifically
- less than 512 bytes, Internet Explorer returns
- its own error message. You can turn that off,
- but it's pretty tricky to find switch called
- "smart error messages". That means, of course,
- that short error messages are censored by default.
- IIS always returns error messages that are long
- enough to make Internet Explorer happy. The
- workaround is pretty simple: pad the error
- message with a big comment like this to push it
- over the five hundred and twelve bytes minimum.
- Of course, that's exactly what you're reading
- right now.
-->

[Randy]

Yep, that would be one way to do it Bob. It's doesn't matter if what's in the error page is visible or not, just that it's over 512 bytes.

Silly browser...

[1dmf]

Do you think there is a department at these big corporate companies that's job is soley to find ways to stick two finger up at their competitors.

Perhaps it's bored programers leaving easter eggs? or if you're less cynical , merley an innocent bug.

So Randy is the browser silly or evil

Edited by 1dmf, 04 September 2009 - 03:52 AM.

[Randy]

Can it be both at the same time?

This is nothing new in this in truth, other than now they're redirecting to Bing instead of delivering an IE produced page. It's been there forever in IE as far as I know, back to the old, old IE versions that were "new" way back in the Windows 95 days. FTR back then it was thought they were doing it to rile all of those Apache users because it was free and IIS wasn't.

And in truth it's incredibly easy to thwart if you know it's there and don't mind editing a few files. Apache can even be tweaked to automatically use the old hidden comment method Bob mentioned above to keep it from happening on a server wide level when people are using stock error docs.

[qwerty]

Of course, we all know you shouldn't be using the server's default error pages, at least not for 404 errors. If you do a custom error page, I'm sure it's going to be a big enough file that you won't have to worry about this, which is probably why this issue is new to so many of us (myself included).

[1dmf]

I've just set up 4 newer PC's for staff members which had a load of updates to be which included IE8, all four machines now suffer from this www issue with G!.

Looks like you are right Randy, MS have made this change in there most recent version on IE8

[Randy]

If it still only happens with Google I'm sure they'd be thrilled to know, and hand it off to their lawyers. That would be a biggie I would think if MS is treating error pages at their domain differently than it treats every other error page.

I can't believe that MS would be so stupid to think someone, somewhere wouldn't stumble across it and have the gumption to test it to try to reproduce the weirdness. I believe in court that's what Google's attorneys would call evidence.

[1dmf]

well to be fair, the browser performs a search based on what ever the default search provider is set to, so a couple of machines actually get taken to google and a search for google is performed.

Now I dunno about you but that tickles me !