steps: 0. move to finland 1. use google chrome 2. visit google.us 3. manage search 4. delete google.com 5. make google.us the default search this works fine in google chrome try it w/ firefox. actual results, i can't find any way to import the google.us search to replace the google.com one. Now, you might ask what's wrong w/ google.com. if you visit me in helsinki, i'll show you. instead of it using google.com, google detects i'm in .fi and sends me to google.fi w/ hl=fi, and the ui is in Finnish.

The redirect based on the IP: http://www.google.com/support/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=873 You are guest in another country, learn .fi and the google UI could be a good start :-) >try it w/ firefox. I start with a german Firefox from a german IP. First step would be get a google.com search plugin instead of the .de one. a) http://mycroft.mozdev.org/search-engines.html?name=google&sherlock=yes b) i select the "Google (No country redirect)" one. c) install it, and select "use it right away" d) success

>a) http://mycroft.mozdev.org/search-engines.html?name=google&sherlock=yes >b) i select the "Google (No country redirect)" one. That of course solves the problem, but not the flaw in Firefox. The fix seems pretty straight forward, we need "add" and "default" controls in the search engine management window. Cc'ing Ryan since he is working on search engine related stuff at the moment, and kev to comment on if user set default search engines is actually possible.

Bug 467890 gave Google (and others) the ability to push you an appropriate plugin to use in place of their current default. As far as I know we're just waiting for them to give us a plugin to ship with this capability enabled.

There was also some discussion around that bug about hooking up plugin installation so that you could do an in-place replacement of any of the defaults (eliminating the need to wait for an update). This bug can probably be used to cover that.

Note also bug 353056.