Hey there! i was really frustrated that DuckDuckGo was the default search engine on my debian install, i thought that it was impossible to disable, after digging i found that it was a master_preferences file, guess what! i found the fix
1. Edit /etc/chromium/master_preferences as root
Here's mine
{ "distribution": { "import_bookmarks": false, "import_bookmarks_from_file": "/usr/share/chromium/initial_bookmarks.html", "make_chrome_default": false, "make_chrome_default_for_user": false, "verbose_logging": true, "skip_first_run_ui": true, "create_all_shortcuts": true, "suppress_first_run_default_browser_prompt": true }, "browser": { "show_home_button": true, "has_seen_welcome_page" : true, "check_default_browser" : false }, "search_provider_overrides": [{ "enabled": true, "encoding": "UTF-8", "favicon_url": "https://duckduckgo.com/favicon.ico", "new_tab_url": "https://duckduckgo.com/chrome_newtab", "id": 2, "keyword": "duckduckgo.com", "name": "DuckDuckGo", "search_url": "https://duckduckgo.com/?q={searchTerms}", "suggest_url": "https://duckduckgo.com/ac/?q={searchTerms}&type=list" }], "search_provider_overrides_version": 1, "profile": { "default_content_setting_values": { "payment_handler": 2 } }, "bookmark_bar": { "show_on_all_tabs": true }, "net": { "network_prediction_options": 2 }, "search": { "suggest_enabled": false }, "signin": { "allowed": false, "allowed_on_next_startup": false }, "autofill": { "profile_enabled": false, "credit_card_enabled": false }, "payments": { "can_make_payment_enabled": false }, "safebrowsing": { "enabled": false }, "dns_prefetching": { "enabled": false }, "alternate_error_pages": { "enabled": false }, "credentials_enable_service": false, "credentials_enable_autosignin": false, "default_apps": "noinstall", "hide_web_store_icon": true, "homepage_is_newtabpage": true, "homepage": "https://www.debian.org" } 2. This is the suspect we want to remove
"search_provider_overrides": [{ "enabled": true, "encoding": "UTF-8", "favicon_url": "https://duckduckgo.com/favicon.ico", "new_tab_url": "https://duckduckgo.com/chrome_newtab", "id": 2, "keyword": "duckduckgo.com", "name": "DuckDuckGo", "search_url": "https://duckduckgo.com/?q={searchTerms}", "suggest_url": "https://duckduckgo.com/ac/?q={searchTerms}&type=list" }], "search_provider_overrides_version": 1, As you can see it is setting DuckDuckGo as the default search engine and overriding other search engine options
3. Delete it, restart chromium, and boom! you are on the google homepage! you can now go in settings and change google to another search engine of your liking (yahoo, startpage, etc...)
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