How to Change Your FireFox Location Bar Search Engine

[...] Owen ruminates on the future of WordPress’ upgrade documentation and why “simple” is never better when dealing with documentation. Bonnie discovers an article which puts an end to the poisoned Halloween candy myth. Michael Heilemann discusses Apple’s tribute to Rosa Parks. Brian lists a few Microsoft Office alternatives, and explains why “Microsoft Office is no more of a must buy than a giant pizza costume.” Khaled completes his Gallery section (more content will be added in due time). Michael Hampton ruminates on the new Akismet anti-spam plugin for WordPress and what the future holds for other anti-spam plugins. Orson ruminates on badly read audio books. Sarah discovers an improvement in her tone and intonation through the use of a single ear plug. Angsuman learns how to change the search engine that is used by Firefox’s location bar keyword search feature. And, Tom discusses a recent outlandish statement made by Forbes magazine. [...]

yes yahoo really crosses the line when it comes to their IM installation.

they are indeed evil.

thanx for the firefox search tip…

[...] ——— UPDATE: If you default search engine for the address bar has been tinkered with by some application you will have to follow the instrucitons on this page to restore them to 'i am feeling lucky google search' how to fix address bar search Posted by allthingsnerdy Filed in Firefox, All, Productivity [...]

I tried the about: config, then keyword:URL, then I changed the value, and it didn’t work for me. I rebooted the computer — still no luck. What else can I do?

Nice, solved a persistent and annoying problem.

Just to add, Google also have evil things (google analytics). Just download the CustomizeGoogle to erradicate these ads activity.

Dumping Google and Yahoo for Microsoft Live Search

I am generally skeptical of Microsoft’s Franco-Soviet development process. Nonetheless, I have been using a number of common Microsoft programs, such as

Windows XPWindows Live MessengerWordpad

because they work better than competitors. Yet whe…

[...] Hat tip to Simple Thoughts, which I found from searching “firefox search engine url address bar“. [...]

Thank you SO much, this helped me alot!

Thanks for this. It allowed me to solve a tagental problem, which was changing the default behaviour of the google search so it was *not* “I’m feeling lucky”

My objections are two-fold.
1. Yahoo forces the change without adequately informing you.
2. Yahoo makes it very hard to remove it.
3. Not to mention that Google search is significantly superior to Yahoo search.

I don’t subscribe to “evil” theory either. Both of them are, as you said, mega corporations with their shareholders interest at heart. Currently however Google is playing fairer than Yahoo.

had to remove MS live search - thank you very much !

my thnaks from Argentina, the reason i don’t use yahoo as a search engine is because i don’t like it!!!. I was realy tired.

Thanks

Thanks for this fix….damn yahoo, installed Mega Manager for Firefox and Yahoo takes over without my notification….thats why I don’t use Yahoo…..

thanx it worked

If anyone is still having problems with the search bar constantly reverting to yahoo, look in your Add-Ons / Plug Ins and look for a plug in named Save Search Settings (or Settin). Remove it, and then shut down the browser, restart it, delete all temporary files, then type this in the about:config area:

http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&q=

and it should revert to a normal, regular google search.

man I hate yahoo!!!

I didn’t install anything or change any settings that I know of. I was surfing and one second my search was Google, the next it was yahoo. I don’t know how it happened, I just know that it sucks. I’ll be putting a link to this article in my next blog posting. Thanks for the info.

Groovy!! Typed in a failed web address, and got jumped on by Yahell. Heh, realized I wanted to be able to use the Address bar for easy searching, and through Google, not Yahoo. So, a few words into Google it self, I see this, and it works great!! Thanks a bundle!!!

Thank you so much for this. I’m finally free of a major annoyance (A.K.A. Yahoo).

i have always go for right click for a selected word i want to know more about, the right-click menu always used to say: search google for “***”, but now it says search yahoo for “***”, how can i have google back instead of yahoo?

I think I love you. Glad I could get rid of shitty Yahoo

Perhaps, yahoo’s creator comes from a communist country, they implement the communist policy in browsers.
How the heck would my grand pa remove Yahoo from search engine.

I tried uninstalling yahoo installer service while i was in a Remote Desktop session. It shut down the computer without warning.
Who ever is thinking evil, will die in vein.

Thank you for this info! The same thing happened to me when upgrading to AIM –it took over my search engine and gave me a toolbar I didn’t need. These posts were sigh of relief—now I can get back to
work!

Thanks again.

[...] this… How to Change Your FireFox Location Bar Search Engine [...]

Ok, I did the process, but after I close firefox, Yahoo takes over again…Any ideas?

Thanks, you’ve saved me a huge headache.

Thanks a lot! It was so annoying to be constantly sent to Yahoo for no apparent reason (I certainly never consciously added it) and removing the toolbar, changing the homepage etc. didn’t seem to do anything. Much better now!

Thank you, this helped me get rid of live search, annoying stuff.

HUGE thanks! I was at my wits end there. What an invasion of privacy.
Almost like breaking into my house, moving my living room around and then nailing everything down. Not exactly, but flipping annoying!

I had this problem too after I downloaded megaupload. The above instructions worked until I closed the browser and then it would default back to yahoo.
Here is how I got rid of it: I uninstalled megaupload, which didn’t fix it, but probably helped. Next I opened a browser - click the ‘tools’ tab, then click ‘add-ons’, this will open a smaller ‘add-ons’ box. Under ‘extensions’ was “megaupload search engine” (which shouldn’t have been there after I uninstalled the program, but was), after I deleted this I restarted mozilla, and yahoo’s search engine was gone.

thank you!!!!! as old as this article is, it is a godsend

I went through a few guides that did not fix this problem. I did did exactly what this one said and it worked perfectly. Thank you so much

Thank you for this great tip. Save me a lot of time!

If the trick mentioned above doesn’t work for you, look if your Firefox Add-On list contains something called ‘Search settings plugin’. This was most probably added by the program PDFcreator, which unfortunately also contains Yahoo spyware. Just get rid of this add-on, and you’re done.

Thanx!!! This info was just what I needed, you ROCK!!! and yahoo sux!

Xxapp

Thank you so much for this!
Although for me, it was ,”ask.com,”
not Yahoo.

hi this is arun