Force Cortana to use Google instead of Bing

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Windows 10’s new search assistant, Cortana, is pretty useful, but she has one big flaw — all her search results go through Microsoft’s search engine Bing. For those of us who live and die by Google, this is pretty unforgivable. For obvious reasons, Microsoft doesn’t make it easy to switch out Cortana’s default search engine — if you want the convenience of Cortana, you’ll need to get used to using Bing.

Or will you?

You can actually force Cortana to use Google — or DuckDuckGo, or Yahoo — instead of Bing with a Google Chrome extension called Chrometana. Here’s how to do that.

1. Set Google Chrome as your default browser

In order for this fix to work, you will need to have Google Chrome set as your default browser. If your default browser is not already Google Chrome, you can change it by opening up the Settings menu and going to System > Default apps. Under Web browser, click the browser that’s currently set as your default app and choose Google Chrome from the pop-up menu. If you don’t see Google Chrome as an option, you should probably download it and install it on your PC.

2. Install Chrometana

Once you’ve made Google Chrome your default browser, open up Google Chrome and install the Chrome extension Chrometana. After you add Chrometana to Chrome, you’ll see a page asking you to pick your preferred search engine: Google, DuckDuckGo or Yahoo. Click the search engine (Google) you want to use.

To return to this page at any time, you can open the Settings menu in Chrome and go to Extensions > Chrometana > Options.

3. Search the Web

Open up Cortana and search for anything — all Web results will go through the search engine you just chose in Chrometana.