If I restart Firefox and access any WWW server, in the "network" tab of the "web developer" tools I can see a second HTTP query: a POST to the URL: .
Does anyone know what this is? I haven't found any information about it on the internet.
34 Answers
GET is the URL google apps/extensions use to check if the client app/browser is connected with internet or more specifically they use this URL to check if the user can access google service or not.
A HTTP code 204 means 'no content'. Therefore it seems the purpose of the URL is to generate an empty response. This answer might also be relevant in determining what it does - namely, some sort of analytics. Check if Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager is being embedded in these websites you visit (it's popular, so it could well be in nearly all of them).
Firefox also has a 'Cause' column in the network table, so this might further help you trace where it gets called.
Is google your homepage? because if you open a new tab, or restart firefox, and google is your default search engine, its likely the browser is already rendering something relating to it. Check your default starting page and default search engine (point them elsewhere or nowhere) and try that again. I bet this is from what you think is an empty page but its actually a google search page.
I think it is obviously the handshaking scheme to make sure a human operation on the current search result page, and reports some actions (mouse move, click).
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