One day I have Firefox open. I rarely use it, but occasionally need to make sure a web page I am working on looks okay in it.

I click open a new tab. I had set new tabs to open as a blank pages. Instead it opens to AVG’s home search page. WTF?

I click another tab, same thing. A search from there goes to Yahoo’s search engine, not to my defined search engine, Google.

I go in my settings and make sure new tab is set to blank page, find a URL to avg.com there, remove it, try again and AVG search still appears.

I check into the browser extensions to delete it there; there is no extension for AVG installed.

I go to Manage Search Engines in the settings. No AVG listed there.

I go to Window > Control Panel > Programs to see if I can find it and install it. Nobody home. I run Revo installer and IObit uninstaller to double check. Nothing found.

Terrified I check to see if it hijacked my other browsers, Chrome, IE and Safari. Luckily it hadn't - unless it is hiding away with some zombie-bot trigger set to go off later.

I go online only to hear a cacophony of “How do I get rid of AVG” with a confusion of solutions that work for some but not others. I try some without luck.

Reluctantly it’s off for a search and destroy mission into the labyrinth of Windows Registry. Surprisingly they named their keys using AVG and I found a few by search and wiped them. But if they other keys with no avg…

Restart, open Firefox, click open a new tab, get a blank page. Woo hoo!

Open Firefox again later in the day and it Ba-a-a-a-a-ck!

These bad guys are too good for me. After frustrating hours, I give up, uninstall Firefox and wipe all traces of it.

I’ll try a new re-install in a week. Maybe.

I have dealt with hijackers before so I am ultra safe when I install anything, particularly looking for add-on offerings, run anti-virus scans, etc. So I have no idea how this slipped through and can only imagine how many anguished cursing hours have been lost as a result.

AVG was using Google Search as its target until Google announced a new policy that would have severely limited hijackers like AVG, So they fled to Yahoo. This article details the unholy alliance.

Google Is Offloading Its Most Disliked Partners Onto Yahoo

"There oughta be a law"