You are not hurting Google by going to another browser.
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I have switched to Opera, as per a poster’s recommendation here. Not at all tech savvy, so please bear with me while I ask what may seem like some dumb questions.
Opera let me choose a default browser from a menu, but DuckDuckGo, the one I have been using, was not among the choices. Okay, I can deal with that by putting Duck on my “Speed Dial” page, as Opera calls it, and I pulled it to my tool bar.
Here is my big question. How in the heck do I disconnect from Google altogether? There it sits on my Speed Dial page and I certainly did not put it there. I cannot find any way to remove it, and going to Opera’s help pages did not tell me.
So that means Google is following me around whether I use it or not, right? Or am I wrong about that?
Thanks in advance for your help?
Just hold the cursor over the Google icon on your Opera speed dial page and a small X should appear in the lower right corner.
Google is not in my speed dial and I think I eliminated most all the speed dial selections that were pre-loaded with Opera.
Google is the issue.
You can integrate other search engines into your browser
Google, Duck Duck, IxQuick, etc are Search Engines.
Opera, Firefox, internet explorer ....are browsers
Google uses persistent cookies and LSO’s to track your every movement on the Internet.
My bad. I see that you are talking about the Google search bar at the top of the speed dial page and not one of the speed dial icons. It looks like you can select DuckDuckGo from the drop down search bar menu. I think I’ll make that change.