Alternative strategy 1
Use System Restore and try to restore your system to a time a week or so before the trouble with Google started......its worth a try and if no joy is easily reversible.
Tried a couple of those with no success. Sort of a PITA to do each one going back a month or so with all the saves and reboots, etc. It might come to that though.
Alternative strategy 2
Uninstall IE do a disc clean up, delete cookies and temps. reboot and reinstall IE and now allow cookies and see how you go........ditto for Firefox.
Yeah, I thought of that but there are a LOT of prefs and addons for both browsers I would have to recreate and reinstall. Not sure if it would be worth it for this problem as it really hasn't effected my system performance and all scans with anti-virus, anti-malware, etc. are coming up clean with no sign of Trojans, spyware, keyloggers, etc.
Thanks for the replies and I'll post if any changes.