When you first download FIrefox, the place where you type the web address could also double up as a quick search engine. Just type in a phrase, click "enter," and you'd come up with Google searches.
After downloading and installing applications like the new Windows Live Messenger,Bittorrent client etc , the search engine turns to change from Google to something else like Bing,ask etc. which most users dont like.
The answer lies in Mozilla's configuration page
* To access the configuration you should open a new tab/window and type about:config into the address bar.
* You may then receive a warning that you could void warranty and screw things up if you set any values improperly but just click ok. (its not a big deal as you can choose to reset all to default which means Firefox will revert to its initial installation state).
* The value you want to change is "keyword.URL"
* The page is alphabetical so scroll down or type in the search box "keyword.URL". Find this value then right click on it and select reset from the drop down menu. It's status should go from "user set" to "default" and you'll notice that before resetting it was some sort of redirect URL for Bing but the default is Google.
* Installing some apps may have changed more than just this particular value (though I understand keyword.URL seems to be the one giving you trouble specifically). You may want to check the "browser.search.*" keys as well. Bold faced keys have been altered from the defaults and quite probably set to Bing,Ask etc and you can reset these to change them back to Google.
If its setting google as search engine in the search bar, follow these steps:
* Go the top right corner of your screen where there's a search box.
* Click on the downfacing arrow at the left corner of the search box.
* Go down to Search Providers and click Google.
* Thats enough for now, you can also remove other search engines permanently by entering the manage search engines option given there.
* In the manage search engine list , click on the search engine you want to remove and click remove button on the right side.
Enjoy happy browsing :)
