[ineedtosleep]

It's just a simple package that's installed with Firefox. The parent is just making it seem like a huge deal, but it's trivial to remove the package and/or change your default search provider.

[crumblan]

I did not find it trivial to remove the package, and changing my default provider didn't work for whatever reason.

[idleloops]

Sounds annoying. Did you try through the firefox (registry) - about:config? Failing that you could try something like Firefox Nightly.

[crumblan]

I eventually got it, but I did end up doing the registry and mucking out some bits in /etc. Then I figured, "hey, I haven't tried Debian yet." So that's probably my next step... but it's looking like if you want it done right you're going to have to compile it yourself :/