Want to take control of Google? There is a magnificent Firefox add-on which allows users to Customize Google. This extension is called CustomizeGoogle and is free from CNET's download.com. This neat tool filters the output of Google when you perform a search. It will actually change the way the results look based on your liking. Some possibilities are removing ads, disabling Google analytics and tracking for privacy, adding links to results from other search engines and placing a history link under each result. The history link can be used to quickly access the WayBackMachine to view older versions of a particular site.

Here are the step-by-step instructions for how to customize google: 

1. Download the CustomizeGoogle Firefox extension from download.com
2. When the Software Installation window opens, click the "Install Now" button. It may take 5 seconds after the window opens before this button becomes available.
3. Once the extension is installed, close Firefox and open it again.
4. Click "Tools" in the Firefox menu, then click "Add-ons". This opens the list of add-ons installed in Firefox.
5. Click "CustomizeGoogle" once to highlight it.
6. Click the "Options" button. This is where you can set preferences to customize what Google will look like from now on. It is reccommended that you select the option that says "Remove ads". "Remove click tracking" is another suggested option to select for privacy reasons. Another helpful feature is "Add links to the WayBackMachine (webpage history)". For those not familiar, the WayBackMachine is a large cache of old versions of web sites. To view an older version of a site, click the "History" link for any given site when browsing within the Google search results. From here you can also select any other options which may be of use. Click each item in the list on the left (Web, Images, Groups, News, etc.) one at a time to configure options for each feature.

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