Remove Ask.com as Default Search in URL Field

My Solution

Internet Explorer 6 (presumably 7 too)

1. Go to Control Panel in Windows itself
2. Click on Internet Properties
3. Click on General
4. Click on Search settings
5. Set new default and delete ask.com

Firefox

1. Open a new tab or window.
2. Type “about:config” and hit enter, this brings up the all powerful settings of Firefox.
3. Agree to the warning that you could mess things up
4. Find keyword.url, you probably should not change anything else
5. Double click and change keyword.url string to something else like http://www.google.com/search?q=
6. Note that you cannot just put in the web site domain, you must put in the parameters before your search query. So find your favorite search engine, do a search and grab all the text up to your actual search results. So that a search for “test” in Google returns this, http://www.google.com/search?q=test, but all you need to input into the keyword.url field is http://www.google.com/search?q=

Remove Ask.com as Default Search in URL Field « Internet Marketing Blog with PaperStreet Web Design – Law Firm, Business & Professionals

Comments:

I hate all things Ask. In Firefox you need to do a few things to be rid of this irritation ware. I seldom end up with Ask installed but just got burned and took some doing to kill it.

1. Uninstall Ask through control panel or better yet Revouninstaller (I use portable).

2. Remove the Ask addon in tools > addons.

3. If Ask search page still comes up in unknown searches do the above steps in about:config.

4. See also this.