@mellis: Thanks for your reply! I get the same long delay when I just modify a few numbers in the Google search code example. The code I posted isn't 100% done, it's just one of 1000 solutions that I tried to find out what causes the hang...
The strange thing is that I don't get this delay when I try the Google example over and over again.. but when I connect to an Apache webserver the problem suddenly appears. Could this have something to do with the way connections are handled? I found out that Google runs GWS, google web server, a modified version of Apache.
I tried the ethernet library, I tried updating the client.cpp & client.h files, I tried the ethernet2 libary, I tried looping connection.stop(), but this bug persists.. Can anyone with an Ethernet shield try the example code above with a different webserver? Does it hang the first time? Does it hang after a hard reset?
@macegr: that would be great.. I noticed the led on pin13 going dim during these hangs, which means that it's flashing at a high rate.. so there's definitely some SPI stuff going on as well.. could this be the cause?