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CustomizeGoogle

Five ways to depersonalize Google search results

A friend asked me to recommend a browser add-on that would allow her to see generic results when she did a Google search. I convinced her to eschew extensions in favor of the manual approach to search depersonalization.

Google's support site explains how the company uses what it knows about you to personalize your search results. The site also describes how to restrict who sees your personal results, limit whose personal results you see, and customize the feature in other ways.

The most-obvious way to depersonalize searches --at least partially -- is to use your browser's anonymous mode. … Read more

Streaming Google results are back

When I fired up my Mozilla Firefox browser this morning, I received an unpleasant surprise. I tried my first Give Me Back My Google search of the day, only to be confronted with a 10 search results and a "Next" button for more results. What the deuce?

I haven't seen a "Next" button for Google results in a few years, ever since I installed the CustomizeGoogle extension for Firefox way back when. Along with key features such as ad blocking, secure connections for Google Docs and Gmail, and alternative search-engine results, my favorite feature of … Read more

Featured Freeware: CustomizeGoogle

Google has long been one of the most useful tools on the Net, but frequent search engine users may find that they can make it even more efficient. CustomizeGoogle is a Firefox extension that adds options to an ordinary Google search, providing additional links to sources such as Yahoo, Wikipedia, or MSN. Depending on the specifics of the search, results might also include links to movie, music, or book search engines.

It's hard not to like the link to the Wayback Machine, which enables users to see pages that have vanished from the Net. The software filters out advertisements, … Read more

Speed up Google search in Firefox

Quiz time: What do CustomizeGoogle, GooglePreview, and McAfee SiteAdvisor have in common?

Answer: The ability to improve on Google search in the Firefox browser. For example, does this scenario sound familiar: You accidentally click on a sponsored link and have to return to the main results page to try again?

How about this one: You wasted 10 minutes clicking through search results because you can't remember the link by name, but think you can identify it by sight (so you check them all)? Or worst yet: You stumble on a dangerous link and get bogged down with malware that … Read more

Firefox 3 beta, memory usage, and overlooked extensions

The big news today in the software world is a new beta version for Mozilla Firefox. The world has been sitting on Version 2 for almost a year and a half now, but the open-source foundation is making sure that Version 3 is fully baked before releasing a final version.

The latest beta release promises "more than 900 enhancements from the previous beta," but a large number of those improvements are back end and mostly invisible. Two significant features in the fourth beta that I appreciate are: an improved password manager toolbar that replaces the old semifunctional dialog; … Read more

Customize Google will save your time, security

We realize not everyone uses Firefox to browse the Web, but for those who do, there's a really great extension that's been getting a lot of buzz lately. It's called Customize Google and it does just that. You can customize every service Google offers, from basic tasks such as automatically redirecting to the secure versions of Gmail, Google Reader, and Google Docs and Spreadsheets, to actually adding links to other search services such as MSN, Yahoo, and Ask.com. Social bookmarking nuts can also add links to services such as Reddit, Digg, and Del.icio.us, right … Read more