I payed my TimeWarner Cable bill today. When I arrived back home and clicked on my iMac, I found I could not connect to Google. I can connect to Bing, Jeeves and other search sites but not Google?

I asked a friend online if she could get to Google and she said yes.

Could my inability to connect to it be a Time Warner thing?

Signed,

A Confused Wolf

My first guess would be something having to do with your ISP; I have come upon stories of bill payment resulting in a piecemeal resuming of Internet access.

Odd things sometimes happen. Where my wife and I live, the only reasonable Internet access is through a cellular telephone provider, with a cellular modem/router and something like the slowest possible DSL access speed.

Earlier this year, we started being unable to connect to the Internet; I called the cellular phone company, whose technical folks informed me that there was nothing amiss. Oh, yeah?

Until a couple weeks ago, my main Internet access was with a G4 eMac with OSX 10.5.8 and a Hyper-Threading Pentium 4 Windows XP Pro system. Only the cellular modem stopped connecting to the Internet with those computers, but would connect with a notebook computer that is running Windows 7. Which is what I am now using.

I got a Windows 7 Home upgrade, and a computer that will not connect with Windows XP will connect with Windows 7. Same hardware, different operating system.

I have an understanding that ISP folks are changing software with the purpose of making the Internet less vulnerable to people who seen vengeance on society, and all sorts of strange things may happen when "security software" becomes so complicated that it becomes insecure because of its complexity.

My free advice? Wait a while,and try again. Wait a while longer if that does not work, and again try again. Then, if that does not work, contact Time Warner, and describe what is happening.

My cellular ISP has not been any help to me, fortunately, I was able to glom onto a proper Windows 7 upgrade at a nearby store, and it is working.

For some reason, I have doubts about the long term viability of building trust exclusively of mistrust. Alas, that seems to be the way the Internet has been going.

Strangely, I tried to access Google just now and it works - woo hoo

Maybe I offended a witch or a troll.

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you Mac