• In the location bar, type about:config and hit Enter.
• In the filter at the top, type: keyword.URL
• Double click it and remove whatever's in there and replace it with http://www.google.com/search?q= and then close Firefox.

If you don't want the location bar to be used as a search tool at all, leave the keyword.URL field blank.

You fixed it - pronto thanks so much, Xircal

You're welcome.

Could you please click the "Solved it" button to take your post out of the loop?

Thanks.

I had clicked Solved.

But I'll be darned, the fix stopped working, because dang there was Bing in my face again. about:config still shows the keyword item blanked. I will be digging a little deeper there now that you pointed the way to about:config, but if you have a thought...

Try creating a new Profile. See Profiles - Where Firefox stores your bookmarks, passwords and other user data There's a link at the foot of the article to Managing Profiles which explains how to create a new one.

I really didn't want any search engine to be used if I entered text that wasn't a url in the location bar (I preferred the previous method of having prefixes and suffixes (www. and .com) appended to the text instead) - I got this behavior back by changing the keyword.enabled setting in about:config (changed it to false, and no more sending the text to a search engine!)...just fyi...