Lots of reports of this coming in from the field and via feedback reports

Bumping to P0 based on volume while we try to track down an owner.

I can reproduce this issue on Corp Pixel 2

Steps to repro
1. Open maps.google.com
2. Search for a hotel (see this screenshot : https://screenshot.googleplex.com/axBGVivFVF2)
3. Click on any ad

If you can repro, please take a network trace: https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/for-testers/providing-network-details

Please ask a few users who can repro the issue on a top level domain to get traces as well.

Network trace attached

Deleted: net-internals-log.json 4.3 MB

net-internals-log.json 4.3 MB View Download

Did a quick scan of our community platforms, only found one reported case on the forums. Nothing on Twitter or Reddit. I've private messaged the user to get in touch to see if we can get the net internals information.

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/uMeVYOI-7AA

Ok, thanks. Does this also repro in incognito mode (with all extensions disabled)? This symptom often comes from bad extension behavior.

Using the steps above, I was able to reproduce the going to an "about:blank" page first on OS X, but then after a second or two it redirects to the correct page. This seems like bizarre behavior to me. Is it standard to open up an about:blank page?

Tried to repro it in Incognito mode. It worked.
I was able to open the page after clicking on Ad.

After clicking on the Ad, Chrome opened up a new about:blank tab which was loading in background. Page eventually loaded.

I removed 'ghostery' from Chrome then I was able to ad link from regular chrome window as well. 

re: #7 This has been a hot topic on CBC. I can provide links to many threads if you can't find them. This has already been provided internally through our CM.

#CBC-RS/TC-watchlist

Came to school today and there were around 20 or so enrolled HP Chromebook 11 G4s (Kip) were in a pile on a desk in the school office. Students came into school with their gSuite sites not working and going to the about:blank URL and turned them in to get fixed.

I signed in with my school account and had the same issue as they did, try to go to mail.google.com, drive.google.com, classroom.google.com, etc. and the URL changes to about:blank and the page doesn't load. I had a teacher sign in and they had the same issue.

To folks seeing this: can you reproduce in incognito/with no extensions enabled? If not, this may be a conflict between an extension and Chrome as in #10.

We will investigate.

 Issue 680079  has been merged into this issue.

Just in case, adding threads from Chromebook Central forum

https://productforums.google.com/forum/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer#!topic/chromebook-central/7qHgzOIDGkw;context-place=topicsearchin/chromebook-central/blank%7Csort:date

https://productforums.google.com/forum/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer#!topic/chromebook-central/L_c4fT9SSl8;context-place=topicsearchin/chromebook-central/blank%7Csort:date

https://productforums.google.com/forum/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer#!topic/chromebook-central/ccroaQ0pJ8A;context-place=topicsearchin/chromebook-central/blank%7Csort:date

This sounds more like a navigation problem than a network one to me.  Do we have a consistent repro?  What version is this on?

Since most reports are about EDU / Enrolled devices, +Royans to see if there are cases about this issue.

Comments 3 and 10: I suspect you're seeing a different issue.  That's just a slowly loading ad in a new tab, which is different from the reports about Google sites ending up on about:blank and stopping.

For anyone experiencing the bug, maybe try disabling all your extensions on chrome://extensions and see if the problem goes away?

One case that showed up on Twitter in the last 24H. We're checking with the user about incognito. No word yet. https://twitter.com/memonoid/status/819036569956847616

I had this happen navigating to cs.chromium.org this morning. After hitting Enter, went relatively quickly to about:blank, and seemed like it was resolving something, then about 4-5s later went to cs.chromium.org. Only happened once, and doesn't seem to repro now.

Comment 20: I think we should distinguish between the cases that about:blank shows up while a slow navigation is in progress and eventually succeeds (which is a different bug with many possible causes) and the cases that the user ends up stopped on about:blank and stays there.

Have we gotten any confirmation from affected users whether disabling extensions helps?  I still suspect that as the cause, given that the spike seems unrelated to a Chrome release.

Sorry, didn't mean to confuse the issue at hand. Feel free to remove my comment.

Removing Internals>Network and adding Blink>Loader to get better eyes, because about:blank isn't handled or returned by the //net stack at all (it lives in //components/about_handler to accommodate Mandoline)

I have three edu-based accounts in our school so far showing about:blank.  Everything works fine in Guest Mode on a Chromebook.  It doesn't remedy after waiting a bit when signing in with the school account.  I can try removing extensions tomorrow.

We dont have any updates on any threads shared in this bug. 
Also we dont have any new reports on Forum, twitter or feedback.

Is it Ok to close this bug ?

Ok with me to close - thanks Abhishek

I still have one student experiencing this.  I haven't been able to do
anything to remedy it.  I haven't seen any action online about it, so I'm
stumped for now.  Perhaps in the future a solution will arise.


Corey Nelson
Rochester Central Lutheran School
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18
"Be joyful always; pray continually;
give thanks in all circumstances,
for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus."
<http://www.rcls.net>
<https://www.facebook.com/RochesterCentralLutheranSchool>
<https://twitter.com/RclsRochesterMN>
<https://sites.google.com/a/rcls.net/nelson/home>

Corey, can you try disabling extensions for that student to see if that helps?  Go to chrome://extensions/ on the affected machine and uncheck the "Enabled" box for each extension.

If that helps, you can re-enable them one at a time until you find the one causing the problem, and we can investigate that one further.  If the problem is still there after disabling all extensions, there may be a different reason for it.  Thanks!

Pri-0 bugs are critical regressions or serious emergencies, and this bug has not been updated in three days. Could you please provide an update, or adjust the priority to a more appropriate level if applicable?

If a fix is in active development, please set the status to Started.

Thanks for your time! To disable nags, add the Disable-Nags label.

For more details visit https://www.chromium.org/issue-tracking/autotriage - Your friendly Sheriffbot

Hello!

I'm willing to let this close.  I did not have the problem with the one
student when I signed on with his credentials at my home.  So, it's just
weird.  I'm going to try something with his account.  So, I'm guessing
everything will be fine!


Corey Nelson
Rochester Central Lutheran School
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18
"Be joyful always; pray continually;
give thanks in all circumstances,
for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus."
<http://www.rcls.net>
<https://www.facebook.com/RochesterCentralLutheranSchool>
<https://twitter.com/RclsRochesterMN>
<https://sites.google.com/a/rcls.net/nelson/home>

Closing this bug.
Resolution : Please see comment 28 (https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=679916#c28)

Pri-0 bugs are critical regressions or serious emergencies, and this bug has not been updated in three days. Could you please provide an update, or adjust the priority to a more appropriate level if applicable?

If a fix is in active development, please set the status to Started.

Thanks for your time! To disable nags, add the Disable-Nags label.

For more details visit https://www.chromium.org/issue-tracking/autotriage - Your friendly Sheriffbot