Remove Google Plus Link from Google Home Page?


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OK so Google are agressively promoting Google Plus. Fair enough. But is there any Greasemonkey type script, or other trick I can use to remove the Google+ link from my Google Search home page. It seems if you sign up for a GMail or other account, you are automatically signed up for a Google+ account too. I am tired and mildly irritated by this and by companies assuming they have the right to sign me up for products I do not want and will never use. I am not looking for a debate on the ethics of doing this, or anything else for that matter. I am just looking for a way to cusomise my Google home page so it only includes things I actually want on it. I don't think iGoogle lets you remove this link, besides which I still only like my page to be very bare, with the plain old Google logo.

 

While I'm at it, is there any way to get rid of Google Doodles too? I am rarely amused by them and most are simply anoying.

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Yeah that might work. But I'm hitting CTRL shift and K on Firefox and it's bringing up something called 'developer tools'. I didn't install this and it isn't a plugin, or an extension, so I can't uninstall it. I read this: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/955124 and disabled it. But now when I press CTRL, shift and K, nothing happens at all. Nada. So what next? Can I change the key combo for this extension?

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Ctrl-Shift-L might work on Firefox installs that have the developers stuff included by default. I use it on SeaMonkey

with Ctrl-Shift-K and that usually to work. I hardly use Firefox, since SeaMonkey does all that I need it to do.

 

There might be a way to re-assign the three key shortcut on either Element Hiding Helper or the developer stuff.

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Ctrl-Shift-L might work on Firefox installs that have the developers stuff included by default. I use it on SeaMonkey

with Ctrl-Shift-K and that usually to work. I hardly use Firefox, since SeaMonkey does all that I need it to do.

 

There might be a way to re-assign the three key shortcut on either Element Hiding Helper or the developer stuff.

 

Getting slightly complicated. There is no obvious way I can find to reassign these keys. I disabled the developer consol as per the above instructions I posted, but this just left these key combos dead, including CTRL, shift and L.

BTW the reason I use FF is *because* of customisations and extensions. I have been using it since before the Beta versions of FF. I have no intention of changing now.

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Getting slightly complicated. There is no obvious way I can find to reassign these keys.

For the element hiding helper? Redefine "extensions.elemhidehelper.selectelement_key".

As far as filters go, I personally am using "google.com###gb_119" to remove the toolbar button, "||plus.google.com^", just to be thorough, "google.com###pmocntr2" to lose the Chrome spam on the main page, "||google-analytics.com^", and an addon called "Google/Yandex Search Link Fix" as sometimes I want to copy a URL from a search result and a tiny little URL will turn out a mile long otherwise, bloody annoying.

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BTW the reason I use FF is *because* of customisations and extensions. I have been using it

since before the Beta versions of FF. I have no intention of changing now.

I use SeaMonkey for mostly the same reasons, plus the fact that it officially used to be the Mozilla Suite before the

folks at mozilla.org turned their attentions to developing Firefox as their official main product. SeaMonkey came

about as a community effort to continue development of the Suite that Mozilla had effectively discontinued.

 

Although Seamonkey isn't officially a Mozilla product, it's built upon the same codebase as Firefox, while Mozilla

hosts their files from their servers and mirror servers, and has trademarked the SeaMonkey name and artwork.

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How? Does this remove the link on the Google home page?

Instead of having notifications and your name, you'll just have "You" replacing your name.

 

Read this first: http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1638152

 

To disable Google+ go to: https://support.google.com/plus/answer/1044503?hl=en

 

I don't know why people on this forum couldn't get you in the right directrion. People just love overcomplicating stuff I guess.

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I don't know why people on this forum couldn't get you in the right directrion. People just love overcomplicating stuff I guess.

Because that's what he asked for, not just opting out but removing all traces from the page in general.
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Because that's what he asked for, not just opting out but removing all traces from the page in general.

You're right. I wanted all traces gone. Thankfully there is another default key combo for element hider that works, CTRL, Shift and F3. The end result is it's gone.

 

Now I just have to work out how to get rid of these pointless Google doodle's. I know other people love them. That's your choice however.

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Now I just have to work out how to get rid of these pointless Google doodle's. I know other people love them. That's your choice however.

"||google.com/logos/*" will block out all of the various logos, doodles, etc. Will leave a pretty big gap where it used to be though as there's other elements with it.. could probably refine that more if you're so inclined.
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Instead of having notifications and your name, you'll just have "You" replacing your name.

 

Read this first: http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1638152

 

To disable Google+ go to: https://support.google.com/plus/answer/1044503?hl=en

 

I don't know why people on this forum couldn't get you in the right directrion. People just love overcomplicating stuff I guess.

 You have to learn to take the good with the bad on here mate. In the old days when Neowin first started up, you had some top notch geeks on here who really knew their stuff. Now not so much. Things are a lot more 'variable' since then. There are always some idiots who tell you to use another browser, another search engine, make some snide remarks about ignoring the problem, or tell you to reinstall your entire OS for even the most minor of problems. Generally stuff that has nothing to do with what you asked. Then they sit in their bedrooms, smugly grinning, believing they are 'experts' and that somehow they know something. So far only the last of these is missing, lol.

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"||google.com/logos/*" will block out all of the various logos, doodles, etc. Will leave a pretty big gap where it used to be though as there's other elements with it.. could probably refine that more if you're so inclined.

 What I would be most inclined to would be to have a basic, visually simple and pleasing Google search page, without any bells and whistles. But if it is just going to leave an eyesore to achieve this, I guess I will just have to live without. Thanks for trying though and thanks for your other suggestion.

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What I would be most inclined to would be to have a basic, visually simple and pleasing Google search page, without any bells and whistles. But if it is just going to leave an eyesore to achieve this, I guess I will just have to live without. Thanks for trying though and thanks for your other suggestion.

Depends on your definition of eyesore and simple.. definitely left bells and whistles in the rear-view mirror. Here's an example with those filters, cropped and scaled way down so as to not be a ginormous image, you get the idea. It's just a lot of white space with a search box and toolbar (sans G+, logo/doodles, Chrome spam, etc), extremely vanilla. Once you start typing it goes to the typical results page as you'd expect, which also has a couple filters going (mostly ad related).  I just added the logo/doodle filter just now out of curiosity, I never go to google.com directly anyway, only through searches.

 

uap6.png

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 You have to learn to take the good with the bad on here mate. In the old days when Neowin first started up, you had some top notch geeks on here who really knew their stuff. Now not so much. Things are a lot more 'variable' since then. There are always some idiots who tell you to use another browser, another search engine, make some snide remarks about ignoring the problem, or tell you to reinstall your entire OS for even the most minor of problems. Generally stuff that has nothing to do with what you asked. Then they sit in their bedrooms, smugly grinning, believing they are 'experts' and that somehow they know something. So far only the last of these is missing, lol.

It's really a shame. I am a huge fan of Google+  I am extremely active on it. But the person asked a question and I am not here to persuade him to stay on Google+ I gave him the answer he was looking for. I am sure he knows he can just log off. I am sure he know he can use Bing. I wish people would just answer questions despite how they feel about products and not be so emotional about it.

 

For God's sake, I can be accused of being a Google lover but it just so happens they offer a lot of stuff I truly want. But they still have to fight for me not the other way around.

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Sorry but this post reeks of your typical irrational Google hatred and nothing more, just an extreme case of it but not extreme enough to use the option of not using Google and it's services 

 

Too much effort put into something that's easy to ignore 

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