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1. Click the arrow next to the search box.
2. Click Find More Providers...
3. Choose Google from the resulting list.
4. Click Add to Internet Explorer.
5. Check "Make default provider..." (paraphrase).
6. Click Add

That was pretty simple. Writing up the process took me at least an order of magnitude more time.

"Choose Google from the resulting list." is a bit of a gloss over, if we're being honest with ourselves.

During setup, if you tell it that you want a new search provider, you are presented with a catalog with pages and pages of search providers. http://www.ieaddons.com/en/addons/?feature=accelerators

Then click the "Search" category.

Then scroll sideways. Yes, it's very non-intuitive and confusing to scroll sideways, without a scroll bar, by mousing over the right side of the screen. But hey, why make it easy? .... keep scrolling... keep scrolling... keep scrolling.

When you reach the 68th listing, it will be Google.

There was nothing simple about that.

IE's extension site is http://www.ieaddons.com/en/

So... why do you use extensions to add your much loved feature if Firefox, but deride IE as though it doesn't offer the same functionality through its own add-ons? I'll grant that the library is smaller, but they exist, there's a centralized location to get them from (open the Add-on manager and click "Get more toolbars and extensions" or just navigate to http://www.ieaddons.com/en/ ), and they seem to provide most if not all of the generally sought-after features. I have ad blocking, mouse gestures, user-agent switching, fast proxy switching, search aliases, user scripts... there's a ton more, for those who want to add more tricks.

The mouse gestures component supports your hold-one-button-click-the-other triggers, too. I typically just use my mouse's 4th and 5th buttons for this, but if you're used to doing it your way, it seems awfully silly to blame the browser rather than just installing the add-in.

The ability to be remotely installed, and managed is a huge feature that is unique to IE. Being native means they could (and should) be able to have the fastest browser on Windows. They could do a number of things that would make me want to use IE as my preferred browser on Windows, but they don't, hence their eroding market share. The majority of people that use Macs use Safari. Why? Because Safari offers a good browsing experience for most people, is very fast, and is reasonable secure. IE 8 should be the same on Windows.

Microsoft could do a much better job of fostering the creation of browser add-ons (ala FireFox). The current selection is pitiful. http://www.ieaddons.com/en/

Microsoft needs more walking the walk, and less marketing. I find this message humorous (displayed when hitting the above link with a WebKit browser)

We noticed you are not currently running Internet Explorer 8. To take advantage of these new features and enjoy a faster, safer and easier browsing experience, we recommend installing Internet Explorer 8 now for free.

(em added)

This is what happens when you make your search engine the default one for your web browser as well as make it difficult for someone to add or change this option.

The drop down menu in IE 8 Search will take you to this page:

Add-ons Gallery: Search Providers

Here's a sampling of the English language options. You have 25 languages to chose from:

Amazon
Google
Hulu
New Egg
New York Times
Wikipedia
Win 7 Comparability

Create your own Search Provider

Add your own search provider to your copy of Internet Explorer by following these steps:

1. Visit the desired search engine in another window or tab.
2. Use the search engine to search for TEST (all capital letters).
3. Paste the URL of the Search results page here

You can customize the name of your provider. You can select the character encoding, from about 50 or so choices. You can view the XML.

This is what happens when you make your search engine the default one for your web browser as well as make it difficult for someone to add or change this option.

The drop down menu in IE 8 Search will take you to this page:

Add-ons Gallery: Search Providers

Here's a sampling of the English language options. You have 25 languages to chose from:

Amazon
Google
Hulu
New Egg
New York Times
Wikipedia
Win 7 Comparability

Create your own Search Provider

Add your own search provider to your copy of Internet Explorer by following these steps:

1. Visit the desired search engine in another window or tab.
2. Use the search engine to search for TEST (all capital letters).
3. Paste the URL of the Search results page here

You can customize the name of your provider. You can select the character encoding, from about 50 or so choices. You can view the XML.

Google is on the front page (for now), but for about a year it wasn't on the front page of:

http://www.ieaddons.com/en/searchproviders

Ask.com, WikiPedia and ESPN were beating it out, and you had to scroll down the second page about halfway to find it. I'm glad to see it is showing up on the front page.

Honestly, I can't blame them for not wanting to help you find google, but any browser these days has to be able to add a google search engine in less than 2 clicks or it's very annoying for most people.

-Dan

I was surprised to find a google search returned no hits from M$ itself, but when I switched to bing, it worked. It seems that M$ is blocking google from searching it's site.

Really? I just copied the phrase from your post "Exchange Certificate on a winmo smartphone" into Google and the first result was a technet article at Microsoft. The best that Bing could do with the same phrase was some press release stuff about the phones (at least on the first page).

I know the results vary depending on your country and phase of the moon, but it seems a bit premature to suggest that Microsoft are blocking google when a million other test searches could easily prove that wrong.

Then after installing XP on another computer, and updating everything (since she wouldnt) I found that in the newest IE I couldnt use google as my search, the "easy" way of adding it was gone.

In other branches of this thread, everyone else has already mentioned the Find more providers option (which really doesn't seem that hard), but what "easy" way has been removed?

The real chuckle with IE8 and its search provider choices: MS has moved Google to the second page of search providers and some of the 1st page choices are a joke...

If you look at this page carefully, you'll see that MS didn't move it anywhere - in left top corner, there's a sort order selector, which is set to "Most Viewed" by default. I've no idea what "viewed" means there (number of clicks on the corresponding link?), but I'm not particularly surprised that Bing would score higher than Google on that on a site for IE addons.

It would be interesting to see what happens if a lot of people (say, from /.) go to that page and each add a comment with a positive rating for Google.

I had the same experience - it took some digging to figure out how to make Google the default search provider, and there were several Googles listed on the page where Google eventually showed up and no good information on which to choose.

Can you clarify the latter part? When I click on the dropdown arrow on the right of the search icon in IE, and select "Find More Providers...", it opens this page. Google provider is indeed tucked away on the second page there, but so far as I can see, it's the only one with "Google" in its name.

Microsoft is not shamelessly plugging Bing. It's a feature.

So neglecting to include the google search provider with IE8 and shoving google to the bottom of a list that most IE users will never use is a feature?

I'm sorry but everyone uses the term 'google' as a replacement for 'search the web' because it's so popular & reliable. Hiding the ability to search with google is a blatant choice to inconvenience its users at the behest of investors.

It's already hard enough to switch to Google. Why is the most popular search engine at the bottom of the list? Could it be that it's weirdly labelled "Google Search Suggestions" unlike the very clear "Bing Search"? I thought that addon was just the suggestions the first time I saw it. If Google had started at the top then it would easily float there. Microsoft probably buried it so the Most Viewed providers would get viewed more and stay at the top.

Most of the add-ons seem to be in the category of widgets similar to what OS X has: http://www.ieaddons.com/ .. one of them seems to help in the search for kiddie porn though: http://www.ieaddons.com/en/details/other/Microsoft_Fiddler/

Most of the add-ons seem to be in the category of widgets similar to what OS X has: http://www.ieaddons.com/ .. one of them seems to help in the search for kiddie porn though: http://www.ieaddons.com/en/details/other/Microsoft_Fiddler/

IE does indeed have a catalog just like that.

http://www.ieaddons.com/

Actually, "Developer Tools" (built into the browser) is quite good, and IE7Pro provides almost all of the other things on your list, WITHOUT having a toolbar.

http://www.ieaddons.com/en/ probably has most of that functionality, probably mostly using activex but i don't really why you wouldn't want to use activex for making ie addons.

I have asked that question before. I've got an answer - see this thread. In short: XPI is installed with only a single prompt, and it can contain native binary components that are not sandboxed, so it's not better or worse than ActiveX in that respect.

I've no idea why you want an ActiveX adblock, because IE7 add-ons are not necessarily ActiveX. And yes, there are IE add-ons analogous to AdBlock, which is trivial to verify by googling it, or checking the official IE add-on catalog.

Firefox will continue to be superior for the same reason it's been in the past: plugins.

http://www.ieaddons.com/en/

Add-ins are the "killer app" of the browser for me. I don't think I'll ever switch from Firefox if competing browsers don't have this feature built into it. I just couldn't live without stuff like foxmarks, flagfox, customisegoogle, etc..

Internet Explorer has had add-ins since version 7. Here is the main portal for them.

Yes, it does include AdBlock analogs, before anyone mentions that. And developer toolbars.

Another misinformation.

YES, IE has addins, but if you ever tried the addins (like I did with Adshield in IE6 4 years ago), there are a few problems:

1) Most of them (I mean 99.9999%) are absolutely useless. The addins on http://ieaddons.com/ are mostly search engines, WTF ?
2) The addins are ActiveX components. The real problem is that Microsoft breaks ActiveX compatibility with every browser version.
The blessed days when AdShield worked disappeared when IE7 was released. AdShield didn't work with IE7, or I should say it tends to crash frequently.
A few years ago, I developed games in ActiveX for IE6, and when MS upgraded their browser, everything had to be done again.
This explains why addins tend to be stopped quickly, since it's a lot of work to develop, and even more time to maintain.

Wrong.

http://ieaddons.com/

Actually, IE has many, many plugins....

It doesn't have the important ones:

http://ieaddons.com/en/search/?search=adblock
http://ieaddons.com/en/search/?search=noscript

Although this one looks interesting.

http://ieaddons.com/

Actually, IE has many, many plugins....

It doesn't have the important ones:

http://ieaddons.com/en/search/?search=adblock
http://ieaddons.com/en/search/?search=noscript

Although this one looks interesting.

http://ieaddons.com/

Actually, IE has many, many plugins....

It doesn't have the important ones:

http://ieaddons.com/en/search/?search=adblock
http://ieaddons.com/en/search/?search=noscript

Although this one looks interesting.

http://ieaddons.com/

Actually, IE has many, many plugins....

It doesn't have the important ones:

http://ieaddons.com/en/search/?search=adblock
http://ieaddons.com/en/search/?search=noscript

Although this one looks interesting.

There are add-ins - http://www.ieaddons.com/en/ which is linked to from the IE8 home page at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/default.aspx The article just basically got it wrong on that front.

Those are not add-ons in the same sense as Firefox add-ons. Those are mostly toolbars, with some of the new accelerators and web slices mixed in. I see nothing that alters the browser fundamentally in the way that FF add-ons do.

There are add-ins - http://www.ieaddons.com/en/ which is linked to from the IE8 home page at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/default.aspx

The article just basically got it wrong on that front.

The add-ins comment makes no sense - http://www.ieaddons.com/en/ (linked to from http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/default.aspx). Add-ins are there...

http://ieaddons.com/

Actually, IE has many, many plugins. You might even recognize some familiar names from Mozilla-land, eg. Foxmarks, StumbleUpon, Cooliris, ....

http://www.ieaddons.com/en/

I did a search and couldn't find any ad blockers. Can anyone provide a direct link?

http://www.ieaddons.com/en/details/Security/Adblock_Pro/

They can keep all their little incremental security and interface updates. What use are a few little tweaks in IE8, when Firefox offers me add-ons like adblock plus, noscript, slashdotter, etc.?

There are IE plugins, too, including ad blockers (just search).

IE7 has an Adblock Plus equivalent? News to me.

Well, it may be news to you indeed, but IE7 has a full-fledged open extensibility system, which does of course mean that there is a number of ad blockers available.

On the whole, with IE7 add-ins, it's quite possible to get IE to roughly the same level as FF or Opera, including all the nicer stuff such as saving/restoring tabs, inline search, and so on. The only thing that can't be changed is the crappy renderer, but that's a headache for the web designers, not for end users (and it seems that IE8 will fix that as well).

All that said, I'm still sticking to Opera for speedy surfing, and I do not intend to change that anytime soon.

IE7 has an Adblock Plus equivalent? News to me.

Well, it may be news to you indeed, but IE7 has a full-fledged open extensibility system, which does of course mean that there is a number of ad blockers available.

On the whole, with IE7 add-ins, it's quite possible to get IE to roughly the same level as FF or Opera, including all the nicer stuff such as saving/restoring tabs, inline search, and so on. The only thing that can't be changed is the crappy renderer, but that's a headache for the web designers, not for end users (and it seems that IE8 will fix that as well).

All that said, I'm still sticking to Opera for speedy surfing, and I do not intend to change that anytime soon.

IE7 has an Adblock Plus equivalent? News to me.

Well, it may be news to you indeed, but IE7 has a full-fledged open extensibility system, which does of course mean that there is a number of ad blockers available.

On the whole, with IE7 add-ins, it's quite possible to get IE to roughly the same level as FF or Opera, including all the nicer stuff such as saving/restoring tabs, inline search, and so on. The only thing that can't be changed is the crappy renderer, but that's a headache for the web designers, not for end users (and it seems that IE8 will fix that as well).

All that said, I'm still sticking to Opera for speedy surfing, and I do not intend to change that anytime soon.

IE7 has an Adblock Plus equivalent? News to me.

Well, it may be news to you indeed, but IE7 has a full-fledged open extensibility system, which does of course mean that there is a number of ad blockers available.

On the whole, with IE7 add-ins, it's quite possible to get IE to roughly the same level as FF or Opera, including all the nicer stuff such as saving/restoring tabs, inline search, and so on. The only thing that can't be changed is the crappy renderer, but that's a headache for the web designers, not for end users (and it seems that IE8 will fix that as well).

All that said, I'm still sticking to Opera for speedy surfing, and I do not intend to change that anytime soon.

IE7 has an Adblock Plus equivalent? News to me.

Well, it may be news to you indeed, but IE7 has a full-fledged open extensibility system, which does of course mean that there is a number of ad blockers available.

On the whole, with IE7 add-ins, it's quite possible to get IE to roughly the same level as FF or Opera, including all the nicer stuff such as saving/restoring tabs, inline search, and so on. The only thing that can't be changed is the crappy renderer, but that's a headache for the web designers, not for end users (and it seems that IE8 will fix that as well).

All that said, I'm still sticking to Opera for speedy surfing, and I do not intend to change that anytime soon.

I know you're trolling, but: http://www.ieaddons.com/. (Mostly crap, but then, so is https://addons.mozilla.org/.)

Even better: http://www.bhelpuri.net/Trixie/. Trixie enables user scripts (ala Greasemonkey) in IE.

Actually IE does have extensions, although not as many and not as good.
You can find them here: http://www.ieaddons.com/ (there's a link from IE Tools menu)

The Developer Toolbar is quite good (I'd say better than FF), there's also an inline search, Fiddler (a headers 'spy' for developers) and others. Some of them are not free though.

Given how many people still use IE over Firefox, when IE 7 and 7+ are released (non-beta), there will be lots of development for IE "Add-ons". These are the Add-ons so far. On the main page, there's a link to make your own MSIE 7 add-ons. Thus, a new facet to the IE/Mozilla competition will emerge.

Shedding tears? No. IE users have a bright and better browsing future to look forward to.

it's quite telling that the guy on this image on the IEaddons page is using a PowerBook

This is a bit off topic but I just noticed that the IE addons page was rooted earlier today Maybe Microsoft should start focusing on their web server security before they worry about web BROWSER security especially before linking the site to the support page for IE7.