The new firefox start page looks a bit tricky when searching google

[Vincenzo Ciancia]

Hi all.

The new firefox start page in hardy:

http://start.ubuntu.com/8.04/

is aesthetically pleasing, and I like it, however the google search
gives me concerns:

1) search results returned using the search field of firefox (upper
right corner of the browser) are different than those returned using the
search field in the page, and in particular I see more ads from the
ubuntu page (don't know why but from firefox I see ads very seldomly -
maybe due to the google cookie that knows I dislike them :) )

2) country seems to be set to "UK", which can explain (1) but I don't
like this behaviour especially because it breaks usability for non-UK
users and creates confusion 

3) adblock is not taken into account (but it is not adblock filtering my
google ads, I just disabled it to test)

4) the obtained page does not have the standard google look and feel (in
particular there is no top bar with google images etc.)

5) there already is the search engine input field, and the focus is
shifted without conditions to the page field only after loading the
ubuntu page, which is rather irritating because you may already be
typing then. In default firefox setup, we seem to have a duplicate
functionality (the two search boxes) and, even worse, results
are /slightly/ different! 

Summing up, I fear that new users will by default use the google search
they see in front of them and think that ubuntu or canonical is tricking
them some way, because they see more ads, a non-standard results page,
and likely not their native language (three typical symptoms of a
possible scam or dns fraud, I might say!).

Thanks to anybody who will want to clarify the issues

Vincenzo