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How do I lock my search provider?

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Back when Mozilla made the big switch from Google to Yahoo it was announced that the new version would change your search provider to Yahoo. I accepted this and after the install changed back to Google as I really don't find the Yahoo search results as relevant or well organized as Google's. However, every update since then overwrites my search settings with Yahoo - no notification or anything, just the next time I use search I get Yahoo and then have to go in and change my settings back... again.

How can I stop this? Is there a switch that I'm missing that would lock part or all of my settings even across version upgrades? If I had a single computer and the updates were infrequent I'd probably just ignore the issue but the updates happen regularly and I have several computers between home and work. It's getting old having to constantly go reset the settings.

I get that Mozilla makes money from their Yahoo deal but give users a choice and be above board about it. It might even sway people if a box popped up after the new version that said something like "Help us maintain funds to continue this great product by switching to Yahoo as your search engine [blah blah blah]" and let us choose yes (change) or no (keep the current settings). Stealth tactics of overwriting those settings with no warning is frustrating and will encourage people to switch browsers.

Back when Mozilla made the big switch from Google to Yahoo it was announced that the new version would change your search provider to Yahoo. I accepted this and after the install changed back to Google as I really don't find the Yahoo search results as relevant or well organized as Google's. However, every update since then overwrites my search settings with Yahoo - no notification or anything, just the next time I use search I get Yahoo and then have to go in and change my settings back... again. How can I stop this? Is there a switch that I'm missing that would lock part or all of my settings even across version upgrades? If I had a single computer and the updates were infrequent I'd probably just ignore the issue but the updates happen regularly and I have several computers between home and work. It's getting old having to constantly go reset the settings. I get that Mozilla makes money from their Yahoo deal but give users a choice and be above board about it. It might even sway people if a box popped up after the new version that said something like "Help us maintain funds to continue this great product by switching to Yahoo as your search engine [blah blah blah]" and let us choose yes (change) or no (keep the current settings). Stealth tactics of overwriting those settings with no warning is frustrating and will encourage people to switch browsers.

Chosen solution

I'm sorry this happened. There was a bit of a mistake in our 34 release that caused some users who switched back to google to get yahoo again when we updated to 35. We are aware of this and are working on making sure it doesn't happen again, so please feel free to switch back to google (or whatever search engine you'd like) and continue to update in the future, this shouldn't happen again in future releases.

Again, apologies for this issue and I promise this wasn't intentional :)

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Seçilmiş Həll

I'm sorry this happened. There was a bit of a mistake in our 34 release that caused some users who switched back to google to get yahoo again when we updated to 35. We are aware of this and are working on making sure it doesn't happen again, so please feel free to switch back to google (or whatever search engine you'd like) and continue to update in the future, this shouldn't happen again in future releases.

Again, apologies for this issue and I promise this wasn't intentional :)

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Bookmark and use this; Download the Mozilla Search Reset {web link} This add-on is very simple: on installation, it backs up and then resets your search preferences and home page to their default values, and then uninstalls itself. This affects the search bar, URL bar searches, and the home page.


Settings Guard for Firefox {web link} Detects and resets changes to settings that are frequently done by add-ons and application installers.

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This may be related but my homepage gets set to MyTARTSEARCH.COM. I had bnver heard of this page or engine. I had deleted from teh search engines and though I had deleted from Mozilla. So what does it appear every so often? Its annoying - making me think there is a bug somewhere desopiate having McAfee protection.

See atatched. Any resoluttion would be appreciated

Regards Simin

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