Google Fixes Bug That Required Cookies To Search

Last week, we saw some reports of people finding they can’t search on Google unless they accept cookies. Google confirmed to us there was a bug causing this that’s now been fixed.

Google emailed us:

This was a bug that was flagged and the team quickly resolved on Thursday. We apologize for any inconvenience.

A thread at WebmasterWorld had searchers claiming the issue only happened on certain versions of Firefox when cookies were disabled. It did appear to be a bug, since it generated a JavaScript error that often read:

Error: uncaught exception: [Exception… “Security error” code: “1000” nsresult: “0x805303e8 (NS_ERROR_DOM_SECURITY_ERR)”

Google’s policy has been that you can search without needing cookies, though you might have some features not offered.

Google also initially reconfirmed to us that requiring cookies “is not something we’re testing or rolling out.”

The company later sent a further statement confirming there was a bug. Our story has been updated to reflect this. It originally only said that Google confirmed that cookies weren’t required, not that it was a bug on Google’s end that was causing the problems.

Image credit to Bill Alldredge on Flickr.