March 29, 2024

What’s wrong with Google in Safari on my iPhone 4?

Am I crazy?
That’s what I thought tonight.

I could access Google from every PC/Mac in the house, but on my iPhone 4?

Nope.

An Error 404 is all I could get.
Every time I attempted to search anything, 404.  I searched this, that, and many other topics…

No matter what I could not get anything other than an error 404.

Some basic troubleshooting

  • Is it just on WiFi?
    Nope, on the 3G network too.
  • Is it only on the iPhone?
    Yep, all PC’s/Mac’s in the house worked fine.
  • Did my Google App still work?
    Yep.
  • Did Gmail still work?
    Yep
  • Could Safari’s cache/history/cookies be the problem?
    Nope, cleared them all.

The problem was still present.

Keep in mind that there is quite a bit of authentication sharing information between apps.

I figured that clearing the cache/history/cookies would take care of the issue, addressing this… As mentioned before, that didn’t help.

A little Google-Fu (on Google itself)
I found a handful of online forum questions & blog posts on the subject. AH HA! I’m not crazy.

There was a general consensus that it had to do with Google.com personalization, particularly focused on a Google bookmark app.

Again, keeping in mind the amount of Google authentication sharing, I decided to delete my Google mail account from my iPhone.

As Emeril Lagasse would say: “BAM

It was working again. I added my Gmail account back, and the issue is still resolved.

Maybe this quick post will help the next person that gets stuck with this issue.

One thought on “What’s wrong with Google in Safari on my iPhone 4?

  1. Glad you published this. Removing and restoring my gmail account wasnt enough… Had to also sign out of google.com and then back in after that. All better. Phew.

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