The blue bar above the Google home page or results page (see screen shot attached)? That actually is a feature of the site and not generated by Firefox.

If you dismiss the blue bar, Google sets a cookie to remind itself not to show it again. If you block or clear Google cookies, the site keeps showing the bar.

You can use a custom style rule to hide it. Some people have used Adblock Plus or a related add-on. Here's an older thread with suggestions: How do I remove the "Get to Google faster. Switch you default search enging to Google" bar at the top of Firefox?

Can you attach a screenshot?

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenshot
• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/how-do-i-create-screenshot-my-problem

• Use a compressed image type like PNG or JPG to save the screenshot
• Make sure that you do not exceed the maximum size of 1 MB

Here is the screenshot.

Unfortunately, your screen shot seems to have gotten corrupted on the back end. Is that the "Search" section of the about:preferences page?

The problem is that websites like Google cannot actually determine what your browser settings are, so it doesn't matter what your default is. Google wants to advertise itself and the only known ways to get rid of it are: (1) keep that cookie, or (2) hack the page using an add-on or custom style rule.

This is the standard Firefox about:preferences page. This just started popping up after updating Firefox. All I can think is that it pops up since I don't have (or want) Yahoo as my default search. Firefox has worked well for me until they connected with Yahoo.

Thanks for the comments.

When does the page pop up? At startup, or when you launch a new window (Ctrl+n), or when you visit a search site? I would normally expect it to appear only when choosing Change Search Settings, and then it should appear in a new tab with a number of categories down the left side.

This page comes up when I execute a search. It does not come up every time and as I don't do a lot of Google searches at work, I have not been able to determine a pattern.

rmrudd13 said

This page comes up when I execute a search. It does not come up every time and as I don't do a lot of Google searches at work, I have not been able to determine a pattern.

Hmm, this reminds me of something odd I have noticed about the Firefox search bar in recent versions.

Occasionally when I finish typing my search and press Alt+Enter (directs results to a new tab), instead of using Google, the bar chooses a completely unexpected site such as Bing or Amazon, as though I had clicked that icon. After getting over my confusion, I generally click in the search box and press Enter again and get my Google results as expected.

In experimenting with this right now, I see that while typing a search, the mouse might be randomly positioned over the icon for a different search site. Pressing Enter (or Alt+Enter) effectively "clicks" (or Ctrl+clicks) that part of the dialog instead of using my default. If I leave the mouse over "Change Search Settings" then that opens in a new tab. Perhaps this explains the inconsistent results you are seeing as well?

I hope this gets fixed soon.