Users of the Firefox browser for Android have been reporting that they are seeing a blank page when trying to load the main Google Search site.

The issue:

Android users with Firefox can’t access Google Search (including intl sites and localized domains like google.de, .co.uk, .com.br). Instead, they see a blank page.

Cause:

A server-side bug on Google’s end related to User-Agent (UA) sniffing, which serves an empty page to newer Firefox versions.

Affected versions:

All Firefox versions on Android (>= 65) including Mobile 121.0, Nightly 123, and older.

Chrome not affected:

The bug is specific to Firefox.

Solutions:

  • Use a different browser (Chrome, etc.) or search engine (DuckDuckGo).

Advanced users can:

  • Change Firefox’s UA in developer settings or with add-ons.

  • Request the desktop version of Google from Firefox settings (region-dependent).

Status:

  • Problem identified as critical and escalated.
  • Still unresolved at the time of reporting.

Additional notes:

  • Disabling Firefox’s Enhanced Tracking Protection doesn’t fix the issue.
  • Some users report google.co.in loading the desktop site instead of mobile.
  • sugar_in_your_tea
    1·
    11 months ago

    Apple Maps is still an insult

    Absolutely agreed. I still use Google Maps because it’s actually useful (going to try switching to OpenStreetMaps again at some point), but DDG is good enough for my needs. Most of what I want is available through bangs (mostly wikipedia, protondb.com, Amazon, Steam, and Google maps), and the rest I can usually craft a decent enough query to find, though I find myself using more terms than w/ Google. On average, I think DDG has been better for me.