Firefox’s Google Search Box

June 27, 2008 by Reah Guevarra
Filed under: Google, Mozilla Firefox

I know some people who are using Firefox hate to see the search bar on the right of the browser, especially if they are not using the default search engine. If you are one of them, I suggest that you just replace Google with the search engine of your choice, instead of removing the search bar.

Just click on the Google logo, and choose among the websites displayed which you like to be your primary search engine in Firefox. Pick Yahoo, Amazon.com, eBay, Wikipedia, or Answers.com. If your favorite site is not included in the default choices, you can add it by clicking Manage Search Engines.

On the Pop-up, click the ‘Get more search engines’ link located at the bottom of the window, and you’ll find out more options; there’s AOL.com, Live.com, and Ask.com. Then add to Firefox the site you want to use, let’s say Live.com. Once it’s added click on the Google logo again, and choose Live.com. Now, your primary website in the search bar is MSN’s Live instead of Google.

The Firefox’s search bar is actually a handy feature. You don’t have to type the search engine’s url in the address bar to start your search. Instead, you just go directly to the box, and type in your keywords. Once you hit enter, viola, the results you needed are in the page.

So Firefox, why Google is the default search engine?

Now that you know you can in fact replace Google with your favorite search engine like Yahoo or Live.com, don’t you wonder why Firefox has Google as it’s default search engine, when it’s not a Google product anyways but Mozilla’s?

Well if not for Google, Firefox may have not become as popular as it has been today, and has not earned millions of dollars. Some bloggers though think that this obvious favoritism of Firefox is unfair, not only to the consumers but also to other search engines.

So while Firefox still loves Google, you only have two options: remove the search box or change the box’s default search engine to the search engine of your choice.

Tags: firefox, remove, search box