Monday, October 01, 2007

Restore Google Search Integration In Firefox Browser Location Bar After Installing Yahoo IM

By default Firefox browser location bar is associated with Google I'm Feeling Lucky search. When users type a keyword like "Google Maps" in location bar Firefox performs I'm Feeling Lucky search  and takes users directly to maps.google.com page.

This is a wonderful feature of Firefox which I like a lot. But this feature disappeared after installing Yahoo Messenger. Yahoo IM hijacks this feature by replacing Google I'm Feeling Lucky with Yahoo search engine without our consent. Yahoo IM installation silently does this evil without even providing any options to skip this modification.

If you are a victim of Yahoo IM like me then follow these simple steps to restore Google's I'm Feeling Lucky

  1. Open Firefox browser
  2. Type about:config in location bar and press enter
  3. Search for configuration key keyword.URL and select it
  4. Right click on the configuration key keyword.URL and choose Reset from the shortcut menu. Firefox automatically reset value to http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=
  5. That's all. From now onwards Firefox uses Google's I'm Feeling Lucky when you type keywords in URL bar.

 

24 Comments:

d d00d said...

thnx for d tip, man...was gettin really frustrated with Yahoo search on my Flock browser

dru said...

wow, guys. wow
thanx heaps

dru said...

awesome thanks man rad

SOB21 said...

indeed I am happy with the help

Andrew said...

Thanks for the help, you guys should be ontop of Google search.
I'm really happy now with my google back.

Μιχάλης Τ. said...

OMG! You saved me, its the simplest way to change back to google search!
You are my heroe!

Anonymous said...

It restores to yahoo again... doesn't work =s

Anonymous said...

To Miguel, I Just had a similar problem, tried the about:config reset thing, but the URL was already pointing to google.

Managed to fix the problem by running Spybot S&D, then reinstalling firefox. Hope this helps

Anonymous said...

If the above firefox config thing doesn't work, try re-installing firefox

Anonymous said...

Wow! Thank you. This drove me nuts for a couple hours. I just switched to AT&T DSL and they gave me a bunch of crap Yahoo add-ons. Yahoo Search became the default on IE and Firefox. I hate Yahoo. Doesn't Yahoo realize that this kind of crap turns people AWAY from their services. I now think that Yahoo is evil -- just like Real Player and bunch of other loser companies. Thanks for helping me to disable Yahoo Search from Firefox!!!!!!!!!!!

Anonymous said...

Thank you very much,

I don't know why Yahoo uses this annoying behavior of changing your Firefox configuration without asking permision but if they are looking for pissing off potential users of their search engines they are succeeding.

Anonymous said...

awesome .. was really annoyed that M$ Live Search hijacked this without my consent ... glad to have this restored ...

Unknown said...

ATT installed the yahoo toolbar during my dsl installation. So if you have any toolbars from yahoo, they were probably automatically sent to yahoo as primary search for explorer and firefox.

Hope it helps.

Ag.

abu Abdullah said...

MEGAUPLOAD's download manager hi-jacked Firefox's default search ability.

Sooooooooooooo annoying!

Thank you so much for the fix! :D

Anonymous said...

Thank you :)

maggy rond said...

OpenDNS also messes up this great Firefox feature. Thanks for telling me how to restore it.

Anonymous said...

THANKS!!! was driving me insane!

Xacur said...

Thank you, it worked.
Nowadays anything wants to change that thing and you got to be careful with anything you accept when you install something.

Anonymous said...

thanks bro searching it for a long time

very very thanks

ChocolateyKisses said...

Absolute lifesaver. Because something was going to die if I had to keep using yahoo!

Mandar Gadre said...

Thanks!
When I installed esnips downloader, it did the same thing to my firefox feature.

Anonymous said...

Best and quick help ever!!! Thanks!

Anonymous said...

great, been looking for a way to cure this for so long..big thanks :-) kev

BrianB said...

many thanks. this has been bugging me for a couple of months!