At first I thought there was an update to Firefox that changed some locale setting. But then I noticed I had the same issue on every computer regardless of which browser I was using. I assumed it had to be a problem with Google in relation to my IP, but I couldn’t find any confirmation until just today.

In a Google Groups discussion, a lot of users were reporting the same issue. One was able to get information from Google and relayed it to the group. Google uses location files to keep track of where an IP resides in the world in order to provide region specific services. Apparently, the files are not perfect and fortunately Google has provided a form in order to report any issues that are found.

http://www.google.com/support/bin/request.py?contact_type=ip

If anyone else is experiencing this strange phenomenon, let Google know so they can correct it. Even my brother on location in Afghanistan was being redirected to www.google.de.

Apparently our friendly coders at Mozilla shuffled out the latest version of Firefox, 2.0.0.12, quicker than they should have. There is a major vulnerability in which a website could use JavaScript code in order to gain access to your browser’s preferences or gain access to every file within the Mozilla program directory. Since these conclusions are based on preliminary testing, the vulnerability may have the capacity to include a wider range of issues.

You do have a few alternatives until the stable release of 2.0.0.13, or higher. I hate to admit to defaulting back to Explorer, but using an alternative browser in the meantime would be beneficial. Opera and Safari are also acceptable choices. Konqueror is also available for the KDE crowd.

If you’re too attached to Firefox to switch, you can always install the NoScript add-on. NoScript automatically blacklists all JavaScript coding and requires your input to allow what can be allowed to run. Since this vulnerability depends on JavaScript in order to work, NoScript would help in blocking it. Of course, this will assume you don’t whitelist a site’s JavaScript that includes this hack.

I would also assume that switching off Firefox’s support of JavaScript in the meantime would also work. However, with the Internet’s dependency on JavaScript in which to add functionality to so many websites, this one included, shutting it down completely would make web browsing pretty useless.