How to disable google.com default search engine ping in Chrome and Chromium

[Sig Weber]

Well, subject says it all ;-)

I'm working 70 per cent of my time with a laptop on a 3G connection.
It is rather annoying that each time I start Google Chrome or Chromium
(for testing something with a local virtual machine) it issues a
network connection to google.com, because it triggers a 3G connect and
sends a few network packets back and forth (which counts towards my 3G
traffic rate contract).

It appears only to happen when Google is the default search engine, so
for temporary relief I've changed it to another one.

Is there any way to turn this off without permanently moving off from
Google as default search engine? It would be great if at least in
Chromium it would be turned off by default.

Apparently it is turned off when using Chrome in headless mode or with
ChromeFrame as described here http://codereview.chromium.org/3171019.

TIA!

Cheers,

Sig

[Ben]

You could try adding another search engine (let's call it "Alt Google"),
with the same url as the default (or this one:
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=%s ). The
keyword doesn't matter, since you'll be setting this engine as the
default. I just set it to "agoo", but you can use whatever. You don't
need to delete the default google search engine, since it has a
different name. ;-)

That should do it. Of course, they may have added some logic to detect
whether you are using their search engine, and still ping. If that's the
case, you may have to file a bug at http://new.crbug.com/ (search
http://crbug.com/ for similar existing issues first). If you do
find/file a bug, reply with a link so other interested people can follow
it.

--
Ben

[Sig Weber]

Thanks for chiming in Ben!

I followed your advise and added a new entry with the link "http://
www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&q=%s", name "Google" and keyword
"google.com" (since the keyword for the default "Google" entry is
different it didn't collide).

So far, it indeed looks like this will not trigger a ping to
google.com. From my investigation I assume the reason is that the
default "Google" entry does not use a hardcoded link but rather uses a
placeholder starting with "{google:baseURL}".

I'm not sure if I should still file a bug report for Chromium since I
didn't expect that the open source variant of Chrome "phones home" too
(hence I've not filed a report as of yet).

Anyways, thanks for your help. Problem solved for the moment. Now I
need to find a way to make those changes in an unattended way before
we are rolling out Chrome to all our company internal (15k+) users
Windows XP/7 desktops (and let the infrastructure department know how
to get rid of the default behavior).

Cheers,

Sig

On Sep 16, 7:21 pm, Ben <benjo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> You could try adding another search engine (let's call it "Alt Google"),

> with the same url as the default (or this one:http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=%s). The

> keyword doesn't matter, since you'll be setting this engine as the
> default. I just set it to "agoo", but you can use whatever. You don't
> need to delete the default google search engine, since it has a
> different name. ;-)
>
> That should do it. Of course, they may have added some logic to detect
> whether you are using their search engine, and still ping. If that's the

> case, you may have to file a bug athttp://new.crbug.com/(searchhttp://crbug.com/for similar existing issues first). If you do

> find/file a bug, reply with a link so other interested people can follow
>

> --
> Ben

[PhistucK]

Do you still have search suggestions?

☆PhistucK

> Ben

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[Sig Weber]

On Sep 17, 3:12 pm, PhistucK <phist...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Do you still have search suggestions?

Nope.

[PhistucK]

Perhaps search crbug.com for an existing issue and star it, or if you cannot find one, file a new issue at new.crbug.com?

☆PhistucK

--