1. Make sure that Firefox is set to "Show my windows and tabs from last session". 2. Open ~15 pages. 3. Restart browser. Result: described in the title. This happens every time, on every AUSTRALIS version, on Win7 & XP Expectations: If it's so necessary to load 1 page before loading the others, let it be about:blank, for example. Not about:home. (I admit I may be very wrong here)

WFM on Fx44b4 Win10. Can you verify it is still reproducible in latest version (Firefox 43)?

It is. I sometimes see it with e10s disabled on ff46, ID 20151230030234. Also, I've tested other case If I set homepage -> https://yandex.ru/ , then during the startup (in non-e10s mode) open console (Ctrl+Shift+J), then sometimes I see unwanted requests to yandex.ru or even the page itself loading > screencast: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/mf9pn5ege3zpxqf/screencast%202%20-%20Every%20time%20browser%20starts%2C%20it%20loads%20homepage%20first%20%28test%20with%20console%29.webm?dl=0 So, I strongly believe that this behavior is hardcoded something like: "When opening new window -> load homepage -> if it's start-up, load tabs from previous session" That would explain the screencast. Also, I think that opening console just slows down some processes in the browser, which, in turn, makes that hardcoded behavior easily observable.

Upd: Not "sometimes". I _always_ see it with e10s disabled on ff46, ID 20151230030234. Never see it with e10s enabled, but I see some "Connection..." happening in the first tab's title

Logging shows http requests going to the homepage (i.e. Google) every start-up

I started to have the same problem yesterday. As I noticed this bug just after I updated to version 53, it thought it was related to that version. I rollbacked to version 52 but the problem still occurs: At startup, Firefox displays homepage briefly (~1second) then loads last session as it should. No matter how many pages were open in the last session, the bug always occurs. Each time the browser starts.