Change Google Chrome default Search Engine from Country TLD to google.com

Technik
Change Google Chrome default Search Engine from Country TLD to google.com

The Google Chrome browser lets you set the default search engine to whatever you want. By default, people living outside of the USA are forwarded to the country specific tld of Google, e.g. google.de for Germany. There are two ways, however, to set google.com as your default search engine.

Create a new Search engine entry

The first one is to simply create a second entry for Google in your Chrome settings. Go to chrome://settings/searchEngines and scroll to the very bottom of the list. Now add a new search engine:

  • Name: Google (custom)
  • Keyword: google.com
  • URL: https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&{google:RLZ}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}{google:assistedQueryStats}{google:searchFieldtrialParameter}{google:bookmarkBarPinned}{google:searchClient}{google:sourceId}{google:instantExtendedEnabledParameter}{google:omniboxStartMarginParameter}ie={inputEncoding}

Now simply press the Make Default button and you're done.

However, there is one Problem with this method. At least for me, Google's omnibox instant search suggestions feature does not work anymore. While I didn't notice it in the beginning, I started to feel that there is something missing. Luckily there is a second solution.

Edit the preferences file

You can also edit the preferences file of your Chrome browser (Windows). To do so, follow these steps (at your own risk):

  1. Close all instances of Chrome. Also check the taskbar icons, as chrome run some tasks in the background (like Hangouts).
  2. Open Windows Explorer, paste %localappdata% into the address bar and press enter
  3. Go to Google\Chrome\User Data\Default.
  4. Open the file Preferences with any text editor of your choice (open with admin rights!).
  5. Find and change both of the following lines from your country domain to google.com.
"last_known_google_url": "https://www.google.com/",
"last_prompted_google_url": "https://www.google.com/",

And you're done. The disadvantage with this method is, that Google may occasionally pop up a notification that asks you to change back to the country specific version. Simply click deny and you'll be fine. (If you have any problems, please see Update 2!)

Please feel free to share this article or leave feedback in the comments section.

Update: As stated in the comments, you can go to www.google.com/ncr, close Chrome completely (again, check the taskbar) and start it again. Try a search from the omnibox, Chrome should now prompt, whether you would like to use google.com by default. Choose google.com and done. Thanks txtsd.

Update 2: I reinstalled Chrome to give the 64bit version a try. After this, the ncr trick did not work at all for me. So I had to edit the Preferences file again, but it didn't work eighter. You now need admin rights to edit this file, so you may try opening your editor with admin rights and find the Preferences file by opening it within this editor of your choice.

Update 3: Not only the last_promted_google_url vanished from the preferences file, but for some reason this method doesn't work for some users anymore at all. So what I recommend is trying this:

  1. Close all instances of chrome (taskbar!)
  2. Connect to a US-VPN, I personally recommend Private Internet Access
  3. Create a new link-shortcut to https://www.google.com/ncr (right click on desktop > new > shortcut)
  4. Make sure, Chrome is your default browser and then click on the newly-created shortcut
  5. Close all instances of chrome (taskbar!) again
  6. Now open the Preferences file on your computer with admin rights and edit the corresponding line, hit save
  7. Make sure, Chrome is your default browser and then click on the newly-created shortcut, again
  8. You may now leave the VPN. Enjoy google.com as your new default search engine in chrome

Let me know, if this method helps. If this doesn't do it, I honestly believe, nothing will help, except locking cookies or the pref-file (see comments below), both with its own downsides.

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