How to remove unwanted search engine

Topic

New Reply

hello everyone;

how can i get rid of a yahoo search engine which appeared in the navigation toolbar of my FF browser?
i am running FF19.0.2 ; XP SP3 in a 32 bit machine.

tia for any help / suggestion.

daniel rozenberg

Reply | Quote

Replies

Firefox > Addons.
Remove from there.

cheers, Paul

Reply | Quote

If it’s a Toolbar, there may also be a listing for it in Add/Remove Programs. Uninstall the Toolbar in that case.

-- rc primak

Reply | Quote

How about for search engines in general? When I first open up Internet Explorer, 3 tabs open: google.com, yahoo.com, and ask.com. I only want Google. . .

Reply | Quote

How about for search engines in general? When I first open up Internet Explorer, 3 tabs open: google.com, yahoo.com, and ask.com. I only want Google. . .

If they open automatically when IE starts, they must be set as home page tabs. Use Tools, Internet Options, General, Home Page to delete the ones you don’t want from the list.

Bruce

Reply | Quote

Thank you Bruce!

Reply | Quote

There should be no real need to get rid of it, just click the dropdown arrow next to the logo to select your default search engine. If you must remove it, select Manage search engines.

Reply | Quote

I agree that removal is not necessary, but these things can be annoying, so why keep them around?

-- rc primak

Reply | Quote

They become less annoying should your main search engine becomes unavailable or their results are filtered, having a ready alternative is a good idea.

Where I think Mozilla could improve is ensuring the default search engine is shown again once the alt. search tab has closed.

Reply | Quote

Still, when the OP says the Yahoo Search Engine “just appeared”, I keep thinking of unwanted add-ons from free software installs, or toolbars which are much more than alternative Search Engines. If this were the case, I’d want the piggybacls gone.

Yes, I keep two or three alternative search engines around in all my browsers, because as you say, one may have an outage, and I do like having a backup around. But only if I know it’s a clean search engine — no other plugins or toolbars around.

-- rc primak

Reply | Quote

I guess the main problem is that many users just don’t know about the inbuilt search engine alternatives just 2 clicks away from that familiar g https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/search-bar-easily-choose-your-search-engine

The bad piggybacks/toolbars frequently require combing through about:config and proxy (un)checking etc., to oust them, they rarely uninstall correctly.

Reply | Quote

You can also hide toolbars under the View/ Toolbars menu. But I’d agree – uninstalling an unintentional toolbar is good idea. Some of them track all of your data entry and add memory burden to the browser. And we also don’t want to encourage the annoying habit of “extras” with required updates. I’ve seen people with 5 toolbars, all added without request.

Also agreed with adding search engines to the actual search engine box. I’ve got a dozen I use for specific kinds of searches. Have never had an outage issue.

Reply | Quote

Like I say, I use about a half-dozen search engines in my browsers, including Google and Yahoo. One just doesn’t cover all the bases. But I know exactly how and where my search engines came into all my browsers. They don’t just “appear” out of the blue. And the default search engine doesn’t get automatically changed — ever.

-- rc primak

Reply | Quote