Firefox users, try this: open Firefox, create a new tab, and enter “http” as the URL. Hit enter, wait a few seconds, and watch as microsoft.com loads.
Anyone know why this happens? I’ve tested it with Firefox on both a Mac and a PC, and both of them do it. Internet Explorer doesn’t, nor does Opera.
At first I thought that it was simply trying http.com, http.net, http.org, or something like that, and being redirected, but none of those domains resolve to microsoft.com.
Ah hah, figured it out. Microsoft.com is the first result returned by a Google search for “http”. Firefox apparently does a Google search for URLs it doesn’t understand, and loads the first result.
This trick of Firefox is pretty convenient sometimes. If you enter a word or multiple words in the URL bar, Firefox will take you to the #1 Google result (like their “I’m Feeling Lucky” search).