Google.com search now refusing to search for FF esr 128 without JavaScript
89 comments
·January 16, 2025ronjouch
Generally works for me with https://www.google.com/search?gbv=1&q=test with JS blocked at domain-level by uBlock Origin.
With the caveat that this used to 100% work, but since a couple months, it indeed occasionally redirects to the “Turn on JavaScript to keep searching” page you mention, https://www.google.com/httpservice/retry/enablejs . I'd say the refusal happens 1 / 20 searches. Said differently, I’d prefix your “refusing” with a “sometimes”.
I haven’t investigated the reason for this sometimes-ness. Would love to find an answer here, or ideas/leads (aside switching to another search engine, yes I do know about them, but sometimes Google remains better). Or maybe the sometimes-ness was just A/B testing, and the full switch is happening and this is now a thing of the past.
EDIT you must have posted precisely at the moment of the end of the A/B test: I did several non-JS searches today at $job, and to confirm what I was writing here I did a test one, successfully. But 30min later, I confirm your observation: 100% blocked.
OhMeadhbh
If I copy "https://www.google.com/search?gbv=1&q=test" into the URL bar in Firefox 128.6.0esr on Linux and hit enter, I get a page that says "Turn on JavaScript to keep searching."
ronjouch
Yes, see EDIT at the bottom of my post.
Waterluvian
I think that lamenting the end of an era because Google doesn’t offer hyperlinked docs is like lamenting the end of fine dining because Olive Garden doesn’t offer cloth serviettes.
We’re looking in the wrong place if we want an ad company to be the champion of anything but revenue optimization.
dilDDoS
Highly recommend Kagi Search as an alternative. The results are generally better than Google's anyways, and don't require JavaScript. It is a paid service, but at this point having reliable/privacy-respecting search is worth it.
Not affiliated with Kagi btw.
Sherl
I see it compares between ads/sponsored vs kagi showcasing just webpages. If I use ublock and block elements, does Kagi has advantage over it? In other words, are the search results superior barring QOL improvement could Kagi possibly bring.
dilDDoS
I personally find the search results from Kagi to be superior to Google/DDG/etc, beyond just not having ads or sponsored content. Before switching to Kagi, I had started to feel like a lot of the front page results from Google were just sites that had managed to maximize their SEO but not actually have much valuable content. That hasn’t seemed to be the case with Kagi. I generally find that the results from them are a lot more informative.
Of course that’s highly subjective, so I think it’s worth trying out their free tier to see if the potential improvement in search result quality is something you notice and find valuable enough to spend money on.
antoine_b
Couldn't agree more. Definitely worth the $10 a month.
ryanator777
Just published a blog post on this topic. We've been fortunate at SerpApi to avoid too many negative effects of this, but I think other web scraping companies were hit harder.
randomjavascrip
Google is now forcing my to go elsewhere and I pay for gsuite. I may as well move it all over to Proton.
I use noscript and refuse to turn on JavaScript for anything but actual Web Applications. I do not turn it on for general browsing of content to be read or search because the the UX abuse that JavaScript enables.
The majority of exploits in the wild are delivered via drive by JavaScript.
That said I'm all for honest Advertising if the UX is not shit.
In fact I think there should be an HTML5 <ad></ad> tag implmented in the browsers sandbox that supports IAB VAST specs so none the that "VAST MACRO" garbage would need to done via huge JavaScript payloads.
randomjavascrip
Maybe Proton should get into the search business. Except Proton requires I turn on JavaScript.
jmclnx
I think google did this to force AI on us. Does not matter to me, I left google a year or 2 ago.
Makes me wonder about Google and AI, with my tin-foil hat on, I cannot help but think Google/AI searches your cache and cookies looking for info.
mossTechnician
Google has questionable behavior in its browser[0] and tracking technologies[1] that sound similar to what you describe, but I believe the search itself is behaving normally. It runs slowly because all LLM chatbots use tons of processing power to pore through servers full of data that may or may not be accurate.
I agree Google is trying to force AI on us, but for a different reason: to demonstrate its value to shareholders.
[0]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/09/how-turn-googles-priva...
[1]: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2025/01/google-is-all...
narmiouh
The way web applications work, there is domain separation of data (be it cache or cookies), so googles "AI" isn't going to be able to read data that it already didn't have access to before.
compootr
this wouldn't matter if the page itself was calling the AI thingamajig
varenc
This isn't making sense to me. Due to the same-origin policy, anything on google.com can only access the cookies and other application data stored there by google.com. Doesn't matter if it's JavaScript or an "AI", Google can't break the same-origin policy and read cookies from other domains. AI changes nothing about this.
(Google services' widespread use by 3rd party sites does give them more data, but they have that whether you load google.com with JS or not. And again, unclear how AI changes anything about what data is available to them.)
rafram
> Makes me wonder about Google and AI, with my tin-foil hat on, I cannot help but think Google/AI searches your cache and cookies looking for info.
This is nonsense. Any cached data or cookies that Google’s scripts have access to was saved by those same scripts. If any site’s “AI” (not sure what you mean by that) could search through objects cached by other sites, you’d have bigger problems.
denkmoon
Good time to get off google then!
simonw
What's FF esr 128?
EDIT: Figured it out - https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1ca4ii3/what_is_fi... - it's "Firefox Extended Support Release" - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-esr-release-cyc...
superkuh
Yep, sorry. The default browser for Debian Linux. I've also found it's blocking firefox forks like Palemoon 33. But really old browsers from the 2015 era don't get blocked (yet). User-agent spoofing does nothing.
HeatrayEnjoyer
How does it detect despite the user-agent?
superkuh
I was wrong. There are a few user-agents they still allow. Like "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:133.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/22.0"
denkmoon
Firefox Extended Support Release version 128
null
NetworkPerson
Firefox extended service release
niutech
I've filed this issue in their Google Search Community: https://support.google.com/websearch/thread/318978583
You can also click the wrench icon in the Google SERP and choose Send feedback.
In the meantime, use another search engine, such as Brave Search, DDG or Searx.
Kodiologist
I got it to work again with a user agent from Links: `Links (2.29; Linux 6.11.0-13-generic x86_64; GNU C 13.2; text)`.
OhMeadhbh
It occurs to me this might be of interest to readers in this
thread.
A couple years ago I put together a list of sites that render
well using Lynx and EWW. Since both browsers don't support
JavaScript out of the box, maybe this is interesting to people
here?
https://ohmeadhbh.github.io/bobcat/
I noticed the Greycoder site has several sites I should probably
add. But if you have a link you think should be included,
please submit a PR on GitHub. While I'm not horribly sensitive
to Github's weirdness after being purchased by Microsoft, I am
sensitive to people who are sensitive to it. So if you don't
want to go onto GitHub to submit a PR, you can find my email
address at https://github.com/ohmeadhbh, just send me an email.throwaway290
I guess google is fed up with freeloader piggy backing. Requiring JS is going to break a bunch of LLM crawlers immediately
superkuh
It'll also break for a lot of of people with impaired vision and screen readers. Screen readers can't keep up with the insane development pace of JS and CSS and so people with impaired vision are going to be left behind. It's an accessibility nightmare.
drivebycomment
Google or most search engines work fine with screen readers with javascript enabled. I think your understanding of how web accessibility works is likely severely outdated. There's just too many websites that use JavaScript that it would be a disservice if web didn't support accessible interface for pages with javascript.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WAI-ARIA
That said, as ARIA rule #1 says, it's better to not use javascript, as it's always less error prone. That doesn't mean websites shouldn't use javascript when they have reasons to do so, as long as they correctly follow ARIA.
mariusor
And which reasons do you think Google absolutely has in order to disable completely the usage of the search engine without Javascript?
duskwuff
This is a common myth.
Screen readers are not a type of web browser. They are software which interacts with other software running on the computer, including web browsers. There is nothing which inherently makes JS or CSS incompatible with screen readers.
throwaway290
Yep. There's a bazillion of accessible JS libraries. Just manage tabindex/aria attributes. Accessibility is about actual DOM not the html string returned from server.
JS gives the same improvements for screen readers as for everyone else especially with complex apps.
Bad JS of course ruins things as usual, same bad HTML with table layout or whatever. But that's not JS on google.com;)
inetknght
That doesn't make it a myth. There are plenty of screen readers that break directly because of shitty use of javascript.
superkuh
Two words: shadow dom. Now tell me how a reader is supposed to know what's what?
kccqzy
My understanding is that people with impaired vision use the regular browser and a layer on top of it, such as VoiceOver. They don't need a special version of website. And screen readers don't need to keep up with JS.
It just redirects everything to https://www.google.com/httpservice/retry/enablejs?sei=... I guess this is the inevitable end of the era of the web as a collection of hyperlinked documents and the beginning of the web as an application delivery protocol.
In other browsers with JS disabled google search still works but this computational paywall rollout for Firefox esr is a sign of things to come.