[PLUG] Has Google taken over browser settings?

John Jason Jordan johnxj at comcast.net
Sun Jan 22 02:30:06 UTC 2012


It used to be that to go to eBay all I had to type in the URL bar was
"ebay" (Firefox or Opera), and the browser would assume I wanted to
add .com to the URL. Of course, if I wanted pdxlinux it would assume I
wanted pddxlinux.com, so you could leave off the .com only with sites
that were really .com sites.

Several months ago I noticed that Firefox no longer did this. When I
type "ebay" in the URL bar it takes me to Google. Google lists eBay at
the top of the hits, but I still have to wait for the Google page to
load and then click a second time. This is very annoying. Google gets
the benefit of another web user going to their site and seeing their
ads, at the expense of the user's time and convenience.

And it does the same now for Opera as well. I've looked everywhere in
both browsers for a setting to change it back to the old behavior, but
I can't find it anywhere. Note that I said that I can't find it; I did
not say it's not there. :) Both browsers have thousands of settings to
sort through, half of which are incomprehensibly labeled.

Is this another usurpation of the web by the giant that I love to
hate? Has anyone else noticed this? Or is it my fault again?



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