Disclaimer: I use Windows, so possibly that could account for some differences.

The blue triangles are an accessibility feature of the page when you have "Instant Prediction Results" enabled (the default setting). Usually the triangle doesn't appear until you press the Tab key. Is that part of your workflow?

When you press the Esc key twice, the first press should focus the search box and the second press should refocus the body of the page -- it doesn't usually reload (but then, my Firefox is heavily customized...).

Last time I checked, Google doesn't have a simple on/off setting for this feature, but you could switch from instant results (retrieved in the background) to traditional results using the preferences page if it's that troubling: https://www.google.com/preferences

no, not tabbing after a search, so its not that..

the instant prediction is set to "never show", its been off for years, just to see if its something broken on my profile, i turned it on, gave it a go (make sure it had been turned on), then turned off again, now its stopped.

Scratch that, still doing it after another tab loaded :(

Hmm, maybe Google has changed things. Considering the number of people complaining about this feature on its own forums, that's surprising.

Does it matter whether you are logged into your Google account? I rarely if ever log in, so what I described is when I am logged out.

jscher2000 said

Does it matter whether you are logged into your Google account? I rarely if ever log in, so what I described is when I am logged out.

not logged in right now, just tested it with logging in, does the same.

it only started doing it after the latest update, funny enough. it was doing it some time ago too, but im sure if fixed it with an about:config switch..

jscher2000 said

Considering the number of people complaining about this feature on its own forums, that's surprising.

oh, never found that.. although I'm not to sure what i was looking for ether, didn't know a name/search term for it or what

Well, searching around, nothing to different was mentioned to here.

So i reset/cleared cookies and userdata.. and it made it go funky, not a blue triangle at the link, but a black one under the text, and it makes a new line when it moves (acts like you put a > at the end of the text, then hit enter)

I went to hit the preference section again, save it as on, ran it to see if it worked, then turned it off again, so far so good, new tabs and all.

sooo yeah, fixed I guess?

Google is known to experiment with its interface, so you can never be sure what will show up in the future... but it sounds good for now.