1552638 - Search engines suggestions shouldn't have shown in Navigation URL Bar, when Search Bar is separated in Address Bar

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect)

Description

[Cees.Dam]

Attachment: Bugreport.png

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:66.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/66.0

Steps to reproduce:

I wanted to prevent the use of a search engine at the adress bar.
All settings are in the attached file as well as the results.

Actual results:

No matter what is changed in the Search Engines settings the adress bar is always handled by the Search Engine. This is a privacy violation. The DNS of my ISP should handle the entered URL. If the URL is invalid or the domain does not exist I should get an error like "Page not found". Now I get suggestions from the search engine (in this case Google).

Expected results:

With the settings supplied in the attachments I should never aproach a DNS server of the Search Engine Provider or the Search Engine its self.

Comment 1

[[:philipp]]

setting keyword.enabled to false should accommodate what you are looking for. the search suggestion preferences are referring to something different: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/search-suggestions-firefox

Comment 2

[Virtual_ManPL [:Virtual] 🇵🇱 - (please needinfo? me - so I will see your comment/reply/question/etc.)]

Agreed, seems like privacy issue, as search engines suggestions shouldn't have shown in Navigation URL Bar, when Search Bar is separated in Address Bar or at least possibility to remove all search engines is needed.

Comment 3

[Cees.Dam]

I changed the setting keyword.enabled to false and I get the result I expected.No intervention from the Google (-search engine).

But this should have been established with the settings already supplied:

Provide search suggestions : negative
Show search suggestions in address bar results : negative
Show search suggestions ahead of browsing history in address bar results : negative
Use the address bar for search and navigation : negative
Add search bar in toolbar : positive

Now I change back to keyword.enabled true.
All other settings remain as stated above.
In the adress bar I entered the word "gastronomy".
Then I get the "Results page" of Google returned.
I explicitly set: Use the address bar for search and navigation : negative

The adress bar is always for navigation so the search option should have been disabled.
It makes no sense to disable the adress bar for navigation.
If I want to use a search engine I use the search bar which is made available in the toolbar: Add search bar in toolbar : positive

Comment 4

[Cees.Dam]

(In reply to [:philipp] from comment #1)

setting keyword.enabled to false should accommodate what you are looking for. the search suggestion preferences are referring to something different: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/search-suggestions-firefox(In reply to Virtual_ManPL [:Virtual] - (please needinfo? me - so I will see your comment/reply/question/etc.) from comment #2)

Agreed, seems like privacy issue, as search engines suggestions shouldn't have shown in Navigation URL Bar, when Search Bar is separated in Address Bar or at least possibility to remove all search engines is needed.

Agreed, a browser must be capable to work without any Search Engine installed.

Comment 5

[Marco Bonardo [:mak]]

keyword.enabled is indeed the pref you are looking for. Provided you disabled search suggestions in the Privacy section of Preferences, nothing is sent to the search engine until you confirm what you typed, and there is an action row in the address bar explaining what is going to happen if the current text is confirmed, so that's not a surprise.

Currently we don't plan to link the keyword.enabled pref in UI preferences, because it would be too easy for the average user to lock himself out of search without a search bar visible. In general we avoid exposing foot-gun prefs. Advanced users can set the appropriate prefs to adapt the behavior to the wanted privacy level, uhe current system allows for maximum flexibility of choice. After all, the search bar is hidden in new profiles, so the user has already to modify settings to make it visible.

If things should change in the future, we'll make the appropriate changes.