First of all excuse me for cc-ing this to debian-devel, but I think
this is an issue to be debated on debian-devel (besides being a bug
report)
Try entering the following URLs in the location bar:
http//kernel.org
http//debian.org
http//www.getthunderbird.org
Result: the user gets redirected to the microsoft website due to the
I'm feeling lucky google search

Solution: disable the default I'm feeling lucky search, or pop up a
window asking if he wants to do the search and getting redirected
(about :config, keyword.enabled->false, or change keyword.URL)

This issue occurs each time a user forgots the : from http, and types
http// instead of http://, firefox performs a google search on http
and microsoft is the first, and thus we get redirected there.
This should not be default behaviour.
Also if the malformed URL appears on a webpage somewhere then firefox
users go to Microsoft, when they expected something totally different.
This means each time I want to click on a URL on a webpage I have to
be carefull looking at the statusbar to see if it says http://, or
http// (actually not, I disabled the I'm feeling lucky search) or
disable the "I'm feeling lucky" search.
Mozilla maintainers have repeatedly marked this bug (and dupes of this
bug) as wontfix.
I hope the debian maintainers will take a look at it, and possibly do
a debate on debian-devel before taking marking the bug as wontfix,
closed etc.
I don't think anybody is comfortable with being redirected to
microsoft when he intented to go somewhere else.
In my opinion the user should always be in total control of what is
going on as a result of his actions, and always know how the software
has interpreted his commands. Software shouldn't guess what the user
wanted and doing that without asking him. So if I typed a malformed
URL I want to know that I did it.

See bugzilla bug #231720

Thanks

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