I have no suggestion how this could be implemented, but I have severe performance problems when I paste a complete URL into the locationbar. My disk starts to rattle and for the first 20 seconds it does nothing, except searching for irrelevant things (autocomplete results presumably). Only after it is ready searching it goes to the URL. Firefox should understand that I'm pasting an URL and that, unless I place my cursor behind the last character, autocomplete results are superfluous.

Mardak: know of anything simple we can do here to optimize when we get a paste event?

Actually, even if I put the cursor after the last char we shouldn't autocomplete in this case. I have a common pattern where I paste the URL, go to end, back up a few chars, edit, and then load (have to do this for most URIs I get from IRC, for example, or when working with bonsai). This bug is actually a pretty significant productivity drag for me, since it increases the amount of time needed to load a typical IRC bug link from 1-2 seconds to 20-30 (that's how long it takes over here to go back 5-6 chars and hit backspace after pasting a url).

sounds like we might want to make this an autocomplete option, not something specific to Places.

moving to toolkit, as this is an autocomplete widget change.

I don't see this bug anymore, maybe 1 second delay, or 2, but not 20. I'll wait a few weeks and if the problem has not occurred anymore, I'll close this bug.

Sad to report that this bug is fully present (again?). Often when I start my browser and past a link to e.g. Mozilla Central in the locationbar, then hitting enter I have to wait for at least 15 seconds before it gets ready to go. Sometimes I see this also when the browser is already open for a longer time. And also the case is back that I type a couple of search terms in the locationbar and that I have to wait a long time before the first 6 or 8 characters appear (blue highlighted); the rest it simply forgets.

This no longer seems to be a problem. I've tested on Mac and Windows nightly build from today.