Google won't work in Safari but works in FireFox?!

I am having the same problem.. I have done everything I cn think of and nothing works.. Dumped the cash and the preferences and cookies and everything I could find that had to do with Safari and reinstalled.. It still can NOT find certain sites because it can't find the "server".. when it lists the server that it can NOT find it gives the URL but just leaves out the "http" part of the address.. Something in Safari is screwed up.. an answer on this would be greatly appreciated.. (or am I just talking to myself here)...

I think it is Google. Couldn't open in Safari or Firefox. Now I can. Google maps wouldn't work but now functions properly.

It's the strangest thing. For the past two days neither the google search window in Firefox and Safari work and I cannot connect to www.google.com in either browser. I can, however, connect to google from my mobile phone (Treo 700p).
Anyone have a clue as to what's going on?

p.s. all my bookmarks work fine.

I removed a thing called "Safari Enhancer and the folders (all of them by hand and into the trash) in Caches in my Users folder library. I also got rid of "Peer Guardian" and the Safari Preferences as well.. When I did a restart and checked Safari I could not only get to Google but I could download from a site that it had refuse to connect to.. All is now well with me... If you have any of these programs on your computer try dumping them and like I did remove the Safari cache folder by haaand to the trash.. May this work for you as well as it did for me.. I am happy again as I can now do searches without having to resort to a different search engine.. It can now find the google server again...

Can you take your Mac somewhere else (next door neighbour using a different ISP, or to work or something) and use the internet connection there, and do you get a different/better result there?

It sounds like you've checked all the "obvious things", and are still getting sites not found or really slow to resolve (that is when the blue progress bar in Safari stops about where the first w in www in the address bar is before the page starts to appear).

If so, something you could try fairly quickly and which has brought relief to rather a lot of people with similar-sounding issues, is you could try changing the DNS server settings on your Mac to use a different provider. NB: I'm not sure what it is that makes the difference, but something seems to have been changed in OS X which makes the Mac work badly with some ISP's DNS services, even when a PC (or a Mac running an older OS X version) is still working just fine on the same network and using the same DNS. I use the DNS servers from www.opendns.com, which are 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220, but people have had good success with other providers too, I just can't remember the names or addresses offhand. Try specifying those in the network configuration on your Mac itself, or on your router if you want to change it for all machines on your network, and see if it suddenly fixes those issues for you.

Tim Baker wrote:
If it was a DNS issue, wouldn't that mean that Firefox would be unable to resolve the website as well, because I'm having no problems with FF.

I agree with you from the common-sense standpoint, but it definitely seems to have been the case for quite a few people in here running 10.5.x that they DO get different DNS-related behaviour depending on which app is making the request. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but it does seem to be reported fairly commonly that way. Try it and see, then we'll both know if I'm blowing smoke 😉

I've been having similar issues. I can't access certain websites but it's not just on Safari, but Firefox as well. One of the many sites is carsurvey.org (I'm car shopping) and it was working about 2 weeks ago on my computer and I haven't made any changes as far as firewall, upgrading, router, etc and now it's not working. My other mac and ipod touch can access the site with ease. Occasionally the site will load but then I can't get anywhere from the home page without it saying it can't find the server. I've reset safari's and firefox's history, cookies, cache and still nothing. I've also gotten rid of Peer Guardian and I'm kinda running out of ideas here. BTW I'm using Safari 3.0.4 & Firefox 2.0.0.11 on a PPC mac running 10.4.11. If there's anybody who can think of anything, I'm sure others as well as my self would greatly appreciate it.

So I just tried setting the DNS to the opendns.com serviers Ted suggested and every site that wouldn't load is now working. Thank you SO much for bringing those up! =)

I bought my iMac 24" in Dec 2007 and I, too, am having issues with connecting to either www.gmail.com or gmail.google.com on either Firefox or Safari. However, I can connect to images.google.com or www.google.com. Weird! I am connected to the Internet on via the iMac's Wi-Fi. I clicked on System Preferences-->Network and selected the wireless connection and clicked on Advanced. Under the DNS tab, I see 3 IP addresses:

192.168.10.1
208.67.222.222
208.67.220.220

The first one is my router's IP address but it is greyed out and I can't remove it nor move it down to make it a lower priority. The other two IP addresses are the openDNS addresses but I never added them myself. I learned about them from this topic/thread. I would like to make the openDNS addresses the active ones but I cannot delete the 192.168.10.1 address or move. The only way I can make it disappear is to disable my AirPort connection, but then if I do that, I won't have Internet access at all (catch 22!). Any way to solve this? It seems that there are many google links on this issue but there is not one clear, working solution. 😟

I had a similar problem with Googlemail, Ebay & a couple of other sites with Safari - I came across the following on TalkTalk's FAQs, which appears to have done the trick. I had also previously also added the additional DNS servers which are mentioned elsewhere on the thread, but don't know if this has made any difference.



+I'm having problems viewing certain websites e.g. Hotmail.+
+If you are having problems viewing certain websites such as Hotmail, MyEbay or secure online banking websites please follow the steps below if you are using a TalkTalk Wireless Router. If you a are using your own router please set the MTU value to 1432 and consult the manufacturers manual for how to complete this.+

+Open your internet browser (eg. Safari) and type this URL in the top bar (where you'd normally type a web address): 192.168.1.1 (Remember, you don't need to type 'www')+
+Use the word admin when prompted for both username and password, click 'OK'+
+A page titled 'Huawei Echolife HG520' should appear. Select 'Basic' on the left menu. On the drop down menu, select 'WAN Setting'+

+Please scroll down and fi rstly change the TCP MSS Option to 0 (zero) followed by the MTU option to 1431, as per the screenshot shown below. Once both of these changes have been made scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the 'Submit' button.+

I just started having this problem suddenly too, and found this page looking for solutions.

I now have one, though not anything found here (however, I also use the openDNS servers recommended and it seems like good advice).

What I did was...

a) I logged out of my google account.
b) That's it.

And now using google.com in Safari is working again. Might not be the solution for everyone (you may not even have a google.com account, for instance). But it worked for me. Good luck!