If you’re still using Mozilla’s Firefox and the built-in default search engine utility that allows you to quickly search up items from the top toolbar, you might be pleasantly surprised to know that you can actually install Yippy as your default search engine to replace the other big tech engines that either track your results or filter out the things they don’t want you to know.
Yippy is a free speech search engine, but most people don’t even know that it exists.
It still has some kinks to work out, but for the most part it simplifies your searches and then gives you a way to further refine what you’re looking for by utilizing categorical tags. It’s a great way for those of you out there who are looking for specific topics but want to further refine your search by sources, news, dates, etc., all within the confines of simple pull-down menus from a tool tab on the side of the screen. The benefits of Yippy is that it gives you more options than DuckDuckGo, less noise than Yahoo, and more refined results than Bing. The only drawback is that image searching isn’t up to par to Google’s, but it’s getting there.
Regardless of the features, if you’re interested in making Yippy your default search engine in Firefox-style browsers, simply left-click on the search bar, and a menu should pop up with your search engines in it. Click on “Change Search Settings”.
Inside the next menu you’ll be presented with a number of search engines. You’ll want to click on the blue link labeled “Find more search engines” .
Search up the add-on called “Add custom search engine”.
Install the add-on.
Go into your settings and click on “Extensions”. You should see “Add custom search engine” in the list.
Click on “Options”.
You’ll want to add a custom search engine to the list, so first put in “Yippy” in the name tab.
For the search URL you’ll need to clarify the search parameters, so type in the following line exactly as it’s printed:
https://www.yippy.com/search?v%3Aproject=clusty-new&query=%s
This will allow you to search terms and items right from the search bar in the browser.
Scroll down and click on the blue button marked “Add custom search engine”.
Head back to the Mozilla Firefox settings and click on “Search”. You should see “Yippy” at the bottom of the list.
Scroll up and click on “Default Search Engine” and change it to “Yippy”.
Wa-la!
You should now be able to use Yippy as your default search engine.
And just for a little background information on where Yippy stands on free speech, you can see the Yippy CEO, Richard Granville, ripping and tearing into Buzzfeed blogger Matt Binder on the Nexus show regarding Google’s censorship and search engine manipulation.
(Thanks for the news tip Nick Monroe)
