Start page is a more private way of searching the web. This is important to me and undoubtedly is important to others, or at least it should be. One aspect of Firefox that I have always liked is the ability to type something into the address bar and have it do a search for it. Basically it functions as a link to a search engine. However, it uses google's search engine by default and with no obvious way to change it.

Luckily, after a little searching myself, I figured out a way to change this. Now mind you that these instructions will work with any other search engine you might want to change to, but I will be focusing on startpage.

First type about:config into your address bar. You will get some type of warning message basically telling you not to mess things up, continue past it.
Second, type "keyword.url" into the box labeled "search". You should get just one result. Right click it and choose modify.
Third, and last, change the contents of the text box that pops up to say "http://startpage.com/do/search?query=".

That is it. Your browser will not use Startpage when searching via the address bar. This modification is so small to that should these instructions every become outdated and you find it is not working, you can right click the "keyword.URL" value we found and choose to reset it.

Enjoy!