Over the years, Firefox has moved away from the "Lucky" and "Browse by name" services, so I would be surprised if that has come back.

To investigate further:

• Do you have the "default" Google search plugin selected in the search box, or a custom one? Address bar search (for searches containing at least one space) should use this search plugin.

• Do you use any search related extensions such as Keyword Search?

You may want to check for unexpected or unrecognized extensions on the Add-ons page. Either:

• Command+Shift+a
• 3-bar button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons

In the left column, click Extensions. Here you can disable anything nonessential (or remove anything clearly bad).

Usually a link will appear above at least one disabled extension to restart Firefox. You can complete your work on the tab and click one of the links as the last step.

Any difference?

Note: if your entry in the address bar has no spaces (e.g., apricots or mozilla.org) then Firefox will first perform a DNS lookup and if you turn on the optional "fixup" feature it will try www.yourquery.com.

Yes, google is my default browser. unless that default was somehow corrupted?

I do not use anything like keyword search ext.

It sounds like you think it my be an add-on bug. therefore, i will have to disable each, one by one, & the test the problem for each add-on. is that correct? that makes a lot of sense, but it is also labor intensive, which is a drag. i will start the process & reply with my response.... eventually.  :)

Thanks for your input!