Google and address bars in Firefox and Safari

A couple months ago I found out that I no longer need to type in .com in the address bar while using Firefox and Safari, but with IE the .com is still required. I thought that was really cool until I realized that when the website is misspelled, you are taken to Google, sometimes with the symbols #% in the address bar. I thought that was strange and didn't really know what to think about it.

Last night I was at my brothers house and was telling him how Safari was faster and more secure than IE and explaining how the .com wasn't needed. When I went to demonstrate, I was taken to a bad gateway and had to enter the .com. I thought they fixed it for some reason, but when I got home I could still surf the net without entering .com.

So, I'm wondering if I got some spyware from Google that took over the address bar somehow and now all the websites I visit are now monitored by Google? Wouldn't this most likely occur in IE than in FireFox and Safari because it's so much unsafer? Is this happening to anyone else?

[edit on 2-8-2008 by ben420]

I also use Safari and when you use a certain number of websites, you just need to type in the first two letters and the remainder of the web address will automatically appear. More to do with 'history' than anything else IMO. It does automatically take me to Google search when there is a typo - I think your settings auto take you to this. There may be alternatives in your settings that will rectify this.

Try using CCleaner and AVG8 (possibly with Spybot), both of which will sort out any issues you mention.

My laptop is more secure with these applications - as for Safari, increased speed and functionality are possibly compromised by security as you mentioned via Google.

It would be interesting to hear from others regarding security of the browsers used.

Breifne

reply to post by Breifne


I didn't know you could just type in the first few letters, thanks for that

I'm still really curious why my brothers Safari isn't the same as mine though, it almost seems like Google infiltrated the computer.

Just check your settings or reinstall safari all together. Use a different search engine than google. I think safari gives you the google application on setup as a functional add in almost.

I'm no expert with browsers, but keep history at zero, try using the applications I stated in my first post (their free) and they will add some protection against malicious access to your computer.

As for google, I'm not sure about that one - I have no real problems with it to date.

Hope this helps.

Breifne

In Safari, Google is the default search engine. If you mistype the domain, with or without the suffix, then it automatically goes to a list of alternate sites in google.

reply to post by maria_stardust


Why isn't my brothers the same then

His just took me to a bad gateway page, like what you get on IE. And you have to type .com on his.

Youve probably set the default search to google.com, or if it was allready set at default perhaps your brother has a different version with different presets?

Google arent installing anything weird on your computer, its just that browser makers "know" what you want. Internet Explorer uses microsofts search.live.com when you dont put in the whole address, and ages ago it used to use MSNs search.

Infact, its been doing it as far back as I can remember? Generally if you dont type a full domain it trys to find the most popular TLDs like .com,.net, etc before sending you to the search page.

[edit on 2/8/08 by dawa]

reply to post by dawa


Thanks for the reply, I actually forgot about IE using search.live.com as a default. So that settles that, now I'm just concerned about how easy that makes it for search engines to track and keep records of what you surf online, instead of just what you search. Especially Google who has already gave the gov't the data of what you and me and everyone else has ever searched for.

Now with Google required to hand over all the data on Youtube on uploads, viewer history and usernames, it seems like a matter of time before they know what sites we visit and for how long.