Well, thanks to all who tried to solve my problem. The moderator may as well close this thread as I’ve scrubbed Firefox from my system and installed Google Chrome.
BTW, while doing this I saw an add for Firefox that bragged “Now Optomized for Yahoo”. Whoppee!! - made me want to sign up right now!
Now that you’ve saved your bookmarks into another browser, run a computer search for Firefox and delete everything it finds, then run another for Mozilla and delete everything that search finds, which, at least, should kill the Firefox Profiles folder if it was still there.
Then go to the Mozilla site and download Firefox again.
I would also go on a search and destroy mission for anything related to Yahoo before reinstalling Firefox. If I felt like living dangerously I’d go on similar search and destroy missions in the registry (search for akamai as well, based on the URL it seemed to be complaining about). My point being - it sounds to me like he has something else in his system that is trying to control his browser and that something is hiccuping when Firefox is his browser.
Sure glad it didn’t take you to some site called “Naked Girls Sucking Dick” or some such thing. That would have been embarrassing.
Google Chrome seems OK so far. Will probably keep it, and also do the search and destroy missions mentioned above.
Do any of you Dopers have experience with Google Chrome? What’s your opinion of it? (This may be sort of a hijack of my own thread, come to think of it.)
Firefox is my choice by far. Haven’t used IE in years, and don’t like Chrome. I hope you’ll let us know if Chrome starts exhibiting the bad behavior.
CCleaneris a good app for cleaning up after stuff. Not affiliated with it or anything, I just like how it works. And the fact that it’s original name is Crap Cleaner 
This post
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=2305673
looks a lot like your problem. Opening a tab redirects to a yahoo search page. It comes from a bad firefox addon in that person’s case.
For me or for you? I’m retired; I wouldn’t have taken similar risks on a work computer back when I was still working. It would just have been a bit of a nuisance since I would have wanted to take after-the-fact precautions to make sure those naked girls didn’t come with some nasty baggage :D.
Chrome is just meh to me. It runs fine, but I don’t like how it renders some sites like youtube and Facebook, and I don’t think fonts look crisp and clean as they do on FF. There might be a way to tweak that, but I can’t be bothered and just launch FF instead.
I was bitching in the Pit the other day about Yahoo search being installed as part of the new standard Firefox download (from the official Mozilla site).
If you do an, um, Google search on this subject you’ll find instructions for how to go into the sooper secret Firefox control panel (first swearing that you realize you can blow up the Earth this way, but still want to proceed) and change the search engine to Google.
End result: I now have a Firefox start page that includes a central Google search box and a peripheral Google search box, as well as the original Yahoo search box. It sounds messier than it is, and at least I can do Google searches without having to plug “Google” into the Yahoo search box first (which must piss off the Yahooites no end). Interestingly, whatever search term I put in the Google box is automatically reproduced in the Yahoo box, as if the Yahoo Minions are hoping I’ll change my mind and use their crappy little search engine instead.
Interesting. I don’t have this problem at all, on either of my computers, one runs XP and the other Windows 6. I have even updated Firefox on the XP machine (by deleting and reinstalling because of a different problem than the OP) and although Yahoo was the original search engine window, changing it to Google was easy and I have no Yahoo bleed-through at all.
So strange.
Delete anything Firefox and then install Pale Moon, a ‘for Windows version of FF.’
Always look carefully at all installs, even itty bitty ones for sneaky already checked little boxes. I have had nothing Yahoo on 98, 98se, XP, Win 7-Pro 64 bit, Ubuntu. I do not do Mac.
HD’s are cheap, I use dual hard drives, one is a back up that is not connected unless I am bit for bit copying a working OS I like. Then I instal other things I want & if it is all OK after about a month I copy the whole HD again. Can’t get bad stuff on a drive that is not connected…
YMMV