Firefox searches from the address bar can be mixed blessing

By default, if Firefox cannot find the URL you typed in the address bar, it will use Google to try to guess what you meant. This may seem like a nice feature to some. I see it more as a nuisance and a security problem.

For example, today I typed in the name of one of our corporate servers, expecting to be taken to a familiar Citrix login screen. Instead, I ended up on a university's web site. In this case, no harm was done but it is not a guarantee this won't ever happen.

In order to disable the keywords searching from the address bar, go to about:config. In the filter box type in keyword to narrow down the settings that are displayed.

To disable the keyword search feature, set keyword.enabled to false (just double-click it to toggle the current value).

Or you can leave the feature set to true and change the URL mentioned under keyword.URL. By default this is set to

http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=.

You could change this to

http://www.google.com.my/search?q=

so that Google will not take you to its first hit but instead takes you to the search result page.

You can still search Google using the search bar, so I don't see the point of this feature.