[callahad]

I'm not privy to the search deal, but my understanding is that this is driven by our internal user research and metrics, which show that a significant number of users have a search engine other than what they prefer or expect. In these cases, users usually choose to directly navigate to their preferred search engine to search, instead of using Firefox access points. That’s a poor user experience, so our focus here is on ensuring users have the defaults they want.

The decision tree is roughly:

1. If the custom engine is one of our default options, keep it.

2. If the custom engine was set by an add-on, keep it.

3. If the custom engine uses HTTPS, prompt the user to actively choose by opening about:searchreset, and do not prompt again after the user has made a choice.

4. If the custom engine uses insecure HTTP, silently reset to the default.

You can open about:searchreset yourself to see what the prompt looks like.

Code at https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/a928be5dacc3b544...

[nialv7]

There's another firefox prompt which also annoys me.

Firefox sometimes asks me if I want to do a factory reset, clear all my settings and add-ons, "to make the browser faster".

I believe most users will find this question absurd. And Mozilla give it a pretty baity name, too. "Refresh Firefox". What if someone clicks Yes by mistake?

[adsche]

Re 3.: I think that's a terrible promtp. The prompt says, my settings might be outdated and I should switch back to Google as a search engine. What's the reasoning here? Why is implied that the settings are outdated if I use a custom search engine? No other settings are checked/affected by this prompt, so why frame it as a settings issue at all?

Re 4.: Why silently, why not a prompt here?

[NiceGuy_Ty]

Using an HTTP based search engine should be explicitly opt-in, imo. Moving it to https by default seems like the right choice for non-technical users.