Hmm, I think those have been on the results page for a long time with the standard Google search plugin. Is it possible that you were using a different one before, or that you might have edited it?

Custom Google search plugins are available from the following page, but I don't know whether any of them remove those icons: http://mycroftproject.com/google-search-plugins.html

Or another possibility is that you were using an add-on that hides parts of pages, such as Remove it Permanently or Adblock Plus, and that extension either is deactivated, or Google's code changed so that the old blocking rule no longer works.

But these are just guesses and hopefully will trigger some memories on your part about how you were getting a custom results page.

During your last update, did you use the Refresh feature? This could occur if Firefox started up slowly and displayed a button to restore some default settings. If you click that button, your old settings folder is moved to the desktop inside an Old Firefox Data folder. Do you see anything like that?

I've gone through most of the possibilities you mentioned. I don't have an Old profile on my desktop so I assume there was no reason for a profile copy. I assume that Google piggy-backed onto the Firefox update. The Google web site requires a login in order to make modifications. It's either creating a Google account with the possibility of disabling the Google Apps (none of which I will use) or choosing another search engine.

You can pull Google results through two other sites with a higher emphasis on privacy. You can judge whether you like the layout better:

• https://startpage.com/
• https://search.disconnect.me/

I don't use those regularly myself, so I'm not sure exactly what the differences might be.