Hidden messages in Firefox?

[ThePenguinCometh]

Here's one for the conspiracy theorists among you: type "$s" (without the quote) into Firefoxs' address bar, you get directed to www.macdonalds.com! Worked for me under Linux, XP and OS X but it doesn't for IE, Opera, Safari or even Mozilla. Are Firefoxs' developers trying to tell us something?

 

[WWR]

Not really a conspiracy. Try typing $s into Google, you'll find that MacDonald's is the first match (even with IE). What Firefox is doing is running a google search on what you type and redirecting you to the first match it brings up. :)

 

[Anti-Trend]

WWR is right. Since Google is the default search engine Firefox uses to match domain names that aren't fully qualified, firefox's search results will obviously be Google's search results. IE doesn't do the same thing because it uses MSN as its default search engine. Slightly off topic, but once I searched for "Panduit" on MSN, and the first two hits it came up with were "pancakes" and "panties", no exaggeration. So, there's really no surprise you get different results in Firefox than IE.

 

[ThePenguinCometh]

Ah, that explains it then. I thought maybe I'd stumbled across an easter egg or some kind of in-joke. Sadly it wasn't anything quite as exciting!

 

[ninja fetus]

hah, it would be funny to see firefox in some conspiracy with america's obesity problem and mozilla's compliance with food ads to mcdonals.

 

[shanegfowler]

Not really a conspiracy. Try typing $s into Google, you'll find that MacDonald's is the first match (even with IE). What Firefox is doing is running a google search on what you type and redirecting you to the first match it brings up. :)

I thought it would be interesting to go a step further. For those of you that were curious what the other letters of the alphabet would do...

$a
apple.com

$b
http://www.btselem.org/English/index.asp
<The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories>

$c
http://www.c-span.org/

$d
http://www.dlink.com/

$e
http://www.eonline.com/

$f
http://www.f-secure.com/

$g
https://www.google.com/accounts/Ser...om/mail/?ui=html&zy=l&ltmpl=wsad&ltmplcache=2
<google mail>

$h
http://www.h-net.org/
<humanities and social sciences>

$i
http://www.itools.com/

$j
http://www.jenniferlopez.com/

$k
http://www.kde.org/
<k desktop environment>

$l
http://www.coe.int/DefaultEN.asp
<council of europe portal>

$m
http://www.tamu.edu/
<texas A&M University>

$n
http://www.kn.pacbell.com/wired/bluewebn/

$o
http://www.oreilly.com/
<computer books>

$p
http://www.pflag.org/
<Parents families and friends of lesbians and gays>

$q
http://www.q4music.com/nav?page=q4music

$r
http://www.r-project.org/
<the r project for statistical computing>

$s
http://www.mcdonalds.com/
<yuck>

$t
http://www.t-mobile.com/

$u
http://www1.umn.edu/twincities/index.php
<university of minnesota>

$v
http://www.vday.org/main.html

$w
http://www.whitehouse.gov/

$x
http://www.x.org/

$y
http://messenger.yahoo.com/

$z
http://www.zmag.org/