Why does Firefox load microsoft.com with this URL?

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.

A simple answer for a strange problem:

For some more odd firefox behavoir try entering “about:mozilla” into your address bar.

Oh for the love of an edit button, in the above post ignore the “_”, not sure why it was put in there.

An edit button wouldn’t help. This forum always does that, and I have no idea why.

If you don’t have Firefox, but you’re curious, “about:mozilla” turns up a dark red background with white text, saying:

It looks like you could google for more information on the Book of Mozilla pretty easily, if you wanted to.

P.S. Replace “:” with “:” to make it omit the “_”

That “Book of Mozilla” quote is an Easter egg.

How many versions ago was it that they were still calling it Phoenix?

Erm. Replace “:” with “[*size=2]:[/size]” but remove the asterisk.

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).

Same thing happens when you use Mozilla.