How to force Firefox to load Google in non-HTTPS

Question

When I type http://www.google.co.uk in the URL bar Firefox rewrites it as https://www.google.co.uk. This is a problem for me as HTTPS is blocked on my network for content filtering purposes.

Until a few days ago this was not the case, but during some experimentation I seem to have visited the HTTPS version of the site once or twice and also had the HTTPS Everywhere addon installed for a time. Now, no matter what I do Firefox redirects there. Sometimes it doesn't; sometimes I load the browser and the HTTP version loads fine, but then the next time it's oddly trying HTTPS again and nothing can shift it until a few session restarts later. I don't understand why it seems to sporadically use HTTP and HTTPS.

I'm using Firefox 23.0 and Ubuntu 12.04.

I've tried a number of things so far:

1. Setting browser.urlbar.autoFill false, browser.urlbar.autoFill.typed false, browser.formfill.saveHttpsForms false
2. Clearing everything from history
3. Resetting Firefox and using safe mode
4. Deleting all the profile data in .mozilla folder and creating a new profile
5. Completely purging Firefox and deleting .mozilla, /etc/firefox and reinstalling

How can I fix this so that Firefox just loads Google in non-HTTPS?

Maybe it's Google doing the redirect, but I just don't understand why it was fine until a few days ago, and also why it only does it sporadically.

Even when I try typing in nosslsearch.google.com I get redirected to the HTTPS version!

Lastly, when I log into another user account on the computer, and try Firefox with Google I see no problems with redirects, just as it had always been until recently on the above account.

EDIT: I should also mention I am not logged into any Google account.

Solution

I noticed using Fiddler that sending HTTP requests to Google would always return the 302s you mention, redirecting me to the HTTPS url as long as a Firefox user agent string was included in the request header. This is my current user agent string using Firefox 24 on Windows 7 x64:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/24.0

So for me, a simple fix was to start using the User Agent Quick Switch add-on for Firefox. I changed my user agent string like this - just removed the Firefox/24.0 at the end:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101

I'd guess a similar change to your Ubuntu user agent string would also do the trick, although there is an outside chance that it be problematic on another site.

Comments

[Rik]

What if you try http://216.239.32.20 ? This is the IP for nosslsearch.google.com. I tried it (always logged in with Google) and got to a non-signed in http Google page.

[Rik]

You can always add 216.239.32.20 google.com www.google.com in your hosts file so you always get to the http and you never use the https variant. It's not perfect but works. I don't know why it's happening in your user-account and not another.

[fpghost]

@ Rik thanks, that will be a good temporary fix at the very least. It could be that Google or Firefox have changed something in the last few days, but for me it seems strange that I also visited the https site and played with https_everywhere extension in the last week too (plus the other account being fine still). Nevertheless, even clean installs of Firefox still bring no joy, so I am lost with what else to try. Alas.

[fpghost]

Yes, I am not logged in or anything. I should have mentioned that --- question has been edited now.

[fpghost]

No, not tried via Software Center, just the purge and deletions followed by reinstall. I will give it a go if you think it might make a difference...

[Paul]

I can't say for sure it will fix it, but it's something I would try, especially since so many other changes have been made it may be difficult to get Firefox back to working normally if the problem were otherwise identified.

[fpghost]

I had seen that in the console also. Still I can't understand why this was not happening until a few days ago (it seems too coincidental with me visiting the https site and mucking around with https everywhere, unless it just so happens google made a major change then also). Secondly, I don't see the behaviour on the firefox on my other user account when I visit http google (no redirects there), which makes me think something local must be happening too.

[fpghost]

I've now done the remove from the Software Center, along with removing everything I could see relating to firefox in Synaptic Package Manager (marking for Complete Removal). Then I deleted .mozilla,.adobe, .macromedia from ~ and /etc/firefox/, /usr/lib/firefox and /usr/lib/firefox-addons. I then rebooted and reinstalled firefox from the Software Center. Unfortunately the problem still persists. Yet on the other user account things are fine...

[Paul]

@fpghost If this is something unique to the user, then I would guess there is some setting somewhere in the user's home directory that is causing this behavior. I'm afraid I'm not familiar enough with Ubuntu Desktop to tell you where to look. I had an issue related to a user on a server that I couldn't track down and ended up just deleting the user and making a new one with the same name, being sure to delete the user's home directory (backing up anything important, of course).

[fpghost]

Also if it is the server, why does even nosslsearch.google.com redirect back to https? seems a very odd behaviour.