> Yeah, I’ll need to see a source here. I'm not "sourcing" this information from any news site which I could share a link to, but from a personal experience. M

> Yeah, I’ll need to see a source here. I'm not "sourcing" this information from any news site which I could share a link to, but from a personal experience. May have screenshots showing the issue but not where I can find them at this time. I was incorrect however, but not so much. The effect was as stated - my searches were going to Google which I have never previously visited on the browser and which I did not intended to share any information with. In 2020, Firefox version 80.0 (or a minor version under 80.0) introduced changes to search which included Google icon appearing as the first, pinned, position on shortcuts (Top Sites) list with a little blue magnifying glass icon sticked to it. At the same time address bar searches started going to Google despite DDG being configured as a main search engine. Google being inserted as a top position of "top sites" somehow made Firefox use it as a first dropdown position in address bar and all searches typed into the address bar were going to Google as it was the top choice. This was happening while DuckDuckGo was still set as the default search (this I didn't remember correctly - default search engine was not changed but ignored when using address bar) and the only way to remove this behavior was to enable top sites (which I had hidden), remove Google icon from new tab / top sites list and then it disappeared from search bar dropdown list. The fact which I think should not be ignored here is that Mozilla renewed their deal with Google just weeks prior to this "incident". This makes me think that this was an intentional not incompetent move.