I had the same problem...fixed it by, changing my homepage to the "blank page" option. closing firefox then reopening it. sounds gone as long as you don't go back to google's homepage.

having the same problem with yahoo. Even when I have another program open to their page it still does it though. It's soooo annoying!!

i just changed to bing.com due to this.

Disable cool previews. it must be interfering with the 30 anniversary of pacman links on the search engines. I disabled mine and it was fixed

found a forum in google groups http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.feedback.firefox/browse_thread/thread/235eaf567be7274b/fa27d8c13ecb8cf2?show_docid=fa27d8c13ecb8cf2&pli=1

Turn off cool previews today.

Google is having a 30 anniversary of pacman and cool previews must be preloading it.

found this in google groups http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.feedback.firefox/browse_thread/thread/235eaf567be7274b/fa27d8c13ecb8cf2?show_docid=fa27d8c13ecb8cf2&pli=1

Disable cool previews. it must be preloading the 30 anniversary page on the search engines. I found this in google groups

groups.google.com/group/mozilla.feedback.firefox/browse_thread/thread/235eaf567be7274b/fa27d8c13ecb8cf2?show_docid=fa27d8c13ecb8cf2&pli=1

All you have to do is disable the "Cool Previews" add on for firefox. Go to the "Tools" link at the top of the browser, go down to "Add Ons", go to the "Cool Previews", click "Disable". Then restart firefox and it should be fine!a