Follow these steps please.

1. In the location bar at the top, type about:config and hit Enter
2. In the filter at the top, type keyword.URL
3. Double click it and replace it with http://www.google.com/search?q=
4. Close Firefox via File | Exit
5. Restart Firefox and go to the page you want as your homepage.
6. Click Tools | Options | General
7. Make sure it says "Show My Homepage" in the dropdown menu at the top and then click the button called "Use Current Pages".

Should work.

EDIT: revised instructions for keyword.URL to display http://www.google.com/search?q=

Good directions but when I entered keyword:URL nothing was in the box to double click. Followed through anyway. Search bar still doesn't work. Only the one on the Yahoo tool bar.

Sorry, but I'm not quite sure if that's a typing error on your part (where you've typed: keyword:URL instead of keyword.URL) or whether the about:config entry looks the same as the one you see in the screenshot I've just uploaded for you?

If it looks like the one in the image, then that's OK.

Firefox 4 - google search bar doesn't work. Other work - reason being the redirect happening for folks out of USA (like, for folks in India, google.com redirects the user to google.co.in)

Go to c:\program files\mozilla firefox\searchplugins\google.xml

Change the google.com to google.co.in (or the local google site)

This change will make the google search bar in f4 to work.

GK

Please read this article on how to change the search engine in the keyword.URL setting in about:config http://kb.mozillazine.org/Keyword.URL