Additional info. - the icon that appears on the home page below the search field, which is supposed provide a quick link, records the last page visited on the site accessed. When this is my bank the last screen accessed is the confirmation of sign out completed, pretty useless when attempting to sign in. Possibly other sites get similar treatment which is why searches go nowhere.

Try disabling your Norton Safe Web addon. It could be interfering with the Google search links and breaking them. Look here: Disable or remove Add-ons

If that doesn't work, disable Norton 360 for a short time then test Google searches in Firefox again. Norton could be blocking the searches.

thanks - I'll give that a go and see what happens. It's more the links than the search that's the problem - eg when a site requests a captcha check clicking on the link goes nowhere. I've just had the same problem with a updating my preferences with a software site, clicking on the internal link within the site goes nowhere, but copying and pasting the https address into Chrome works. Chrome also has Norton 360 safe-web enabled & that's not blocking in the same way - so now I'm having to use Chrome in preference to Firefox.

sorry - disabling Norton 360 makes no difference - but clearing cache works like a charm. (just gets to be a nuisance to do this so frequently).

Hey Mike, looks like with a lot of detective work from the helpers here & others users like yourself with the same problem, the Google search breakage was tracked back to the "Web Shield" feature of both Avast & AVG AVs.

Do you have either of those installed? The craziest part is that both AVs are owned by the same company. Avast bought AVG back in 2016 but did not rebrand the name.

To disable Web Shield, look here: https://support.avast.com/en-us/article/One-Web-Shield-settings You have to scroll half way down the page for the Disable Web Shield section. You also have to choose the last option "Until I turn it on again" so that the Web Shield doesn't auto-enable itself again. Very tricky software.

• Open Avast One, then select Explore ▸ Web Shield
• Click Open Web Shield
• Click the green (ON) slider, then click Continue to confirm that Tracking Prevention will also be disabled
• Select "Until I turn it on again"
• Close Firefox, reopen it. Test Google searches again

Thanks guys but I don't use either Avast or AVG. For my sins I use Norton 360, and have tried disabling the extension Norton Safe Web (the only extension I have) and it made no difference.

The problem is not so much Google searches but links, either within site (eg open Captcha to confirm), or when I enter a previously used address eg bom.gov.au when the address appears in the bottom left of the window but nothing else happens. Then when I clear cache and start to re-enter the address the rest of it is picked up from history and away it goes.

It may be co-incidence, or just a good afternoon, but I can't reproduce the problem today. Upgraded to 129.0.2 in the last day or so and I'm wondering if that's helped. Will monitor over the next few days and come back with the result.

Thanks Mike for all the extra details. Really appreciate it. Keep testing the new Firefox version & report back when you can. At first I thought it was just a bug with things entered into the address bar. But if even clicking links triggers it, its definitely something monitoring or interfering with connections to the internet.

Now I've got my eye on Norton 360 itself. Since the Safe Web extension is innocent. Will try to see if it has a similar "Web Shield" feature that checks all incoming internet connections. It seems all antivirus have a website filtering feature that checks all the sites you visit to see if they are dangerous or malicious. My theory is that since the website filtering is so complicated, it starts breaking normal internet surfing.

By any chance, does your wife's PC also have Norton 360 installed? I know you said you share the same configs but just want to double check that. Hopefully I find something more concrete about what's causing this for you soon.

Note that you can clear cookies and site data for the current tab via the padlock icon in the location/address bar.

Hi NoahSUMO. My wife's and my PC started out identically - same hardware, same Windows 10, same Norton 360, same MS Office 2019, but they've drifted apart as her work profile is different to mine, she has things like Dragon & Handbrake which I don't.

I got a recurrence today of the 'hang' when I tried to go to a new site - it just sits with only the search icon and "Search with Google or enter address" showing, no padlock icon so can't clear cache from there, but clearing cache only from History drop down menu and then retrying the search from recent searches works. This afternoon the problem is reproducible.

Interestingly the site I'm looking for doesn't appear in the dropdown history of searches until after cache is cleared, then it does when I can select it from there and away it goes.

Another form of the error is when I enter search parameter not used by me recently eg Hartland Point. This produces a list of Hartland Point links which when I select one puts the link into the address bar eg: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=hartland+point, which just sits with the search icon showing and goes nowhere. I've left that window open without trying to go further to see if eventually responds.

Thinks - are we looking at two problems, or two manifestations of the same problem (ie the search, and the site internal link eg Captcha)?

When I clicked on the link in the email above the search parameter appeared in the bottom left corner of the window but nothing else happened. Then after a minute of two of typing this reply re-clicking on the link worked without my doing anything else - no clearing cache, nothing, just the passage of time. (but the tab left open mentioned above was still stuck on the same search - until I the hit enter again, when it worked).

I thought I was just baffled, but now I'm confused as well!

correction - my wife's PC is using Norton Anti-Virus (not 360) which looks and behaves like 360 - if there's a difference I've yet to find it. I suspect it's the same engine - just marketed differently.