Privacy concerns with Firefox 14!

This really irritated me: I had Firefox open on my Mac and typed in a web URL (www.softpro.de). Perhaps the system was a bit slow, for whatever reason, Firefox left a “translation” of this URL in the URL entry field that was pretty shocking:

http://www.google.de/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCgQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.softpro.de%2F&ei=w7FEUM2VIIbFtAbFmYGYBA&usg=AFQjCNE0-3ECEco1haEYb8rL7xPVA3-DCw



I didn’t write the original URL in the search field, so the shocking truth seems to be: this “translation” can only come from Firefox. The “translation” changed back to my originally entered URL within about a second, so capturing the “translation” was tricky - it also shows that it was repeatable and not a strange “freak” action.

The question is: why?

My guess is, Mozilla is getting funded by Google and is sending references and metadata to Google in return. I have no idea what is encoded in the two data strings “&ved”, “&ei” or “&usg” is beyond me, but thats a lot of data encoded in them.

Quite honestly, I’m not a fan of Safari’s stability, but this is completely ridiculous. Mozilla, you get an “F” from me, so much for an independent Internet based on Opensource software!

If I’ve missed something here and there is a simple explanation, please let me know in the comments section.
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