Spyware, viruses, & security : Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at www.go

Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at www.go

Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at www.googleadservices.com. Neither can IE or Opera. Nor can they open any other click through sites.

I appreciate all the comments in the thread saying why this is a good thing, however, I consider it a problem because I am morally opposed to allowing a hunk of aluminum and silicon to dictate what I can and can't access and, frankly, because with Avast and Spybot and the lastest Microsoft whatever anti-spyware running I feel halfway protected against viruses, trojans and spyware.

So here's the situation. I have tried visiting googleleadservices with all the protection programs on and all of them off, the results are the same. I've tried it running the browsers through a proxy and directly through the router and the results are the same. There is another one other computer on the netowrk. It runs the same version of XP (Service Pack 1,) anti-virus and browsers and it connects to leadservices and other click throughs fine, so I can't believe the problem's in the router settings.

Of course, I don't really need to connect to click through ads, but the fact that I can't is driving me nuts. Any suggestions?