Who's in charge here?

[kaal]

I'm running Firefox. It has sold me out to Google! Google has taken over control of my computer. I enter www.google.com and I get google.ca. No matter which way I try, I can't get google.com, only dot ca. And they aren't the same. Even if they were, how do they do this? It's not what I want. For example, the dot com site has a shopping feature on it, the Canadian dot ca doesn't.
When I installed Firefox, it didn't ask me if I was a Canadian & it didn't ask me where I live (I live in Canada). How did Google do this to me & how do I purge this outrageous invasion?

 

[Ijack]

Sounds like a virus is in charge. Have you done a thorough virus/malware scan?

 

[kaal]

Sounds like a virus is in charge. Have you done a thorough virus/malware scan?

Everything is scrubbed clean.

I type in http/goggle.com into the address bar & hit enter & ... .ca pops up.

 

[Flakes]

its just a redirect google does, even toms hardware used to do this, i used to type in .com and it would redirect me to .co.uk, theve changed it recently so when i put in .com it asks me where im from.

for the shopping feature try www.froogle.com which should direct you to the shop feature search in google.

 

[kaal]

its just a redirect google does, ...

How did they do it? How do they know who I am? Did they get this information from my ISP? How do I get control of my computer back? When I type google.com, I expect to get .com, not .ca!

for the shopping feature try www.froogle.com which should direct you to the shop feature search in google.

Thanks for the tip.

 

[ohiou_grad_06]

Probably based on your IP address. Because if you have all the records and all you can tell what company someone gets their internet through via their IP address. So if google looks at the first part of that address and see it's a canadian company, that's probably why it kicks you over there automatically.

 

[Ijack]

Type, or bookmark, www.google.com/ncr. That will take you straight to the .com site.

 

[kaal]

Probably based on your IP address. Because if you have all the records and all you can tell what company someone gets their internet through via their IP address. So if google looks at the first part of that address and see it's a canadian company, that's probably why it kicks you over there automatically.

You got that right, thanks. Here's what my ISP had to say when I asked them about not disclosing my address: "There is no way to do this, simply because going to Google’s site from any given country will result in Google redirecting the user to the Google site for that specific country. This is done on a lookup of what country the IP address you are accessing the internet from is associated to.

For this to change you would need to move abroad (which probably is not a feasible option ), or use a proxy. While we cannot help you with a proxy, we can give you a link to explain what it is - http/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_server."

 

[kaal]

Type, or bookmark, www.google.com/ncr. That will take you straight to the .com site.

Elegant, thanks!