How to get rid of conduit as a default search engine in Firefox

Reading Time: 2 minutes So it looks like this conduit thing is stuck in your browser.

First, why would any company want to do that.
A bit of datamining, a lot of google adverts money.

I don’t know for sure but maybe this company which is by the way providing some nice software most of the time, is keeping records of the searches you are entering in google. They probably don’t really build any profile on you but at least they get a good idea of what the people they are connected to are looking for on the web.

Reading Time: 2 minutes

So it looks like this conduit thing is stuck in your browser.

First, why would any company want to do that.
A bit of datamining, a lot of google adverts money.

I don’t know for sure but maybe this company which is by the way providing some nice software most of the time, is keeping records of the searches you are entering in google. They probably don’t really build any profile on you but at least they get a good idea of what the people they are connected to are looking for on the web.

The second part which is the most likely part is that they are making money with the adverts which are displayed with the results, Google is giving them a cut on that.

The problem is that the interface is not the same anymore, you are missing all the new good google stuffs, and it just sounds evil… did they ask you permission? I don’t like this way of making business…

So here is the way to gt rid of it.

First all the obvious things, get rid of the toolbar, get rid of the extensions and replace the startup page in the options and replace the default search engine in the search box on the top right of your window.
If you know your way around firefox this should be easy. If not, there are tons of other pages that can help you with that.

Second, where it gets more tricky.
Open a new tab, type: about:config.
In the filter box type: conduit.
You should see a long list of entries added by that conduit toolbar.
Look for the one that says browser.search.defaulturl
Double click on it and replace it with https://www.google.com/?q={searchTerms}
Close the tab and it should be working like before now.
You can type whatever you want in the url bar and firefox will just send it to google for a search query and return the real Google page.

By Marc Olivier Meunier

Marc has spent the past few years putting oil on the fire of a hyper growth ad tech company. At Smartly.io he was in charge of scaling the support and its culture. At Eficode he is now leading an engineering team and running operations. He leads by example and puts a lot of emphasis on diversity and inclusion, constantly working to create a safe environment. A warm leader with a passion for memorable experiences and innovation.
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