Chrome and Firefox can not resolve the same host name, dig can

Ubuntu 14.04.

I am on a local domain, xxx.local. From the terminal I can use dig and host to lookup many names served from our local dns servers like zzz.yyy.xxx.local. When I type that same host name in both chrome and firefox, I get ERR_NAME_NOT_RESOLVED errors.

Why can't these browsers resolve these names?

Turns out it's a difference between the way chrome/firefox fetch names and the way dig/host fetch names.

Typical nsswitch.conf has this line:

hosts:          files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns

Which should be changed to:

hosts:          files dns mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return]

and then everything will magically work.