watir webdriver browser will not goto url

Question

When I run the .rb file, the browser opens, but doesn't go to the desired url. Screen stays blank white. When I hit control c in the terminal to quit, I get:

/Users/xxx/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.2.1/gems/selenium-webdriver-2.49.0/lib/selenium/webdriver/firefox/launcher.rb:90:in 'connect_until_stable': unable to obtain stable firefox connection in 60 seconds (xxx.xxx:xxxx) (Selenium::WebDriver::Error::WebDriverError)

I used simple code to test and still no luck:

require "rubygems"
require "watir-webdriver"

browser = Watir::Browser.new :firefox #:profile => profile
browser.goto('http://google.com')

Answer 1

There seems to be an open issue on this for Selenium: https://github.com/seleniumhq/selenium/issues/835

Most often proposed solution:
Downgrade to Firefox 45 .