# Google Search has Stopped Working -- Any Help? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [January 12, 2025, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-search-has-stopped-working-any-help/1012881 "2025-01-12T19:42:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Aspenglow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspenglow/32/76_2.png) [@Aspenglow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspenglow)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2025, 7:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-search-has-stopped-working-any-help/1012881/1 "2025-01-12T19:42:33Z")
Ok, so this is a little embarrassing, but I’m at my wit’s end. The other night I went to get a glass of water and when I returned, my very helpful dachshund of Shovel Paws fame had trampled all over the keyboard to my laptop. I was (naturally) tuned to the SDMB website, so the changes he made – whatever they were – were to my browser. He somehow opened the Bookmarks toolbar. It took me forever to figure that out and how to turn it off, and I pressed quite a few buttons in frustration in my efforts to fix his handiwork. I use Firefox and Google is my browser of choice. Everything is up to date. However, ever since this incident, Google will not search. It no longer helpfully fills in proposed search terms and when I enter one, say “map (with address)”, the little wheel spins for a moment and then… nothing happens. At all. It’s as if Google doesn’t even see my query. When this first happened, I rebooted my system and that seemed to solve the problem. Everything worked as normal for awhile. But when I kicked my system out of Sleep Mode this morning, it had rebooted itself overnight and the problem has returned. Any and all suggestions on what I could try will be gratefully received. ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2025, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-search-has-stopped-working-any-help/1012881/2 "2025-01-12T19:46:11Z")
Is this happening when you go to [www.google.com](http://www.google.com) and search there, or when you search from your browser’s URL bar, or? Does the same thing happen if you try Firefox in Troubleshoot Mode? [Diagnose Firefox issues using Troubleshoot Mode | Firefox Help](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/diagnose-firefox-issues-using-troubleshoot-mode) ---
**Author:** ![Aspenglow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspenglow/32/76_2.png) [@Aspenglow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspenglow)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2025, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-search-has-stopped-working-any-help/1012881/3 "2025-01-12T19:50:24Z")
> [@Reply](#): > > Is this happening when you go to [www.google.com](http://www.google.com) and search there, or when you search from your browser’s URL bar, or? Happens either way. It can find things that are stored in its memory, like websites I visit all the time, but nothing new. Although fuck me, I just tried it again and it worked flawlessly! If the issue recurs, I’ll try the Troubleshoot site you referenced. Thank you! I do think this is a Google issue, not a Firefox one. Firefox seems to be working fine, but Google is glitching for me at random, it seems. ---
**Author:** ![Aspenglow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspenglow/32/76_2.png) [@Aspenglow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspenglow)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2025, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-search-has-stopped-working-any-help/1012881/4 "2025-01-12T20:07:22Z")
Now not working again. Dammit. ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2025, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-search-has-stopped-working-any-help/1012881/5 "2025-01-12T20:11:34Z")
> [@Aspenglow](#): > > I do think this is a Google issue, not a Firefox one. Firefox seems to be working fine, but Google is glitching for me at random, it seems. This is not really addressing your question but I highly recommend moving over to another search engine; I use [DuckDuckGo](https://duckduckgo.com/) almost exclusively and almost never have a problem searching for something that I want or getting glitchy behavior. Whenever I do use Google—either for the image search option, or because someone has sent me a link—I get a wall of useless results which has to be scrolled through before even getting to something pertinent to my search. And while I don’t use Google search often enough to have experienced the apparently frequent outages and malfunctions but from what I hear from others it seems like it has achieved peak enshittification and is now circling the event horizon of the Internet Indexing Singularity where all information is smushed together into a pease pudding of homogenized data at a state of maximum entropy from which no useful knowledge can be extracted. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Railer13](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/railer13/32/9742_2.png) [@Railer13](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Railer13)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2025, 8:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-search-has-stopped-working-any-help/1012881/6 "2025-01-12T20:12:33Z")
> [@Aspenglow](#): > > I use Firefox and Google is my browser of choice. Do you mean that you use Firefox and Google is your search engine of choice? ---
**Author:** ![Aspenglow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspenglow/32/76_2.png) [@Aspenglow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspenglow)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2025, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-search-has-stopped-working-any-help/1012881/7 "2025-01-12T20:19:32Z")
Thank you. I will try Duck Duck Go. > [@Railer13](#): > > Do you mean that you use Firefox and Google is your search engine of choice? This is undoubtedly a better way to say what I meant. * * * Just dashing out the door for awhile, but I will try all these things when I get back and report the results. Thanks to everyone, it’s all helpful! ---
**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2025, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-search-has-stopped-working-any-help/1012881/8 "2025-01-12T20:23:39Z")
As an aside, if you’re open to alternative search engines, [Kagi.com](http://Kagi.com) is another one to try. [DuckDuckGo is mostly just whitelabeled Bing](https://duckduckgo.com/duckduckgo-help-pages/results/sources/) (Microsoft’s search engine, with often mediocre results) with a few added results. Kagi is a paid service with its own result set and many customizable features. Unlike Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google, and most other search engines, being a paid service means that you are the customer and not the product. They are incentivized to make your experience better, not to exploit you for ad dollars. …that said, though, I still do just use Google (with an adblocker). I don’t care enough about search to make Kagi worth it =/ ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2025, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/google-search-has-stopped-working-any-help/1012881/9 "2025-01-12T21:49:45Z")
Perhaps try uninstalling and reinstalling Firefox? Also try Firefox in whatever it calls an incognito window.