how are people making google be my default search engine in 2026?

One that trips people up: the search box on the Windows taskbar isn't your browser. On most setups it sends you to Bing whatever you've chosen in Chrome, so if that's where you keep ending up, there's no browser setting that will change it.

Depends which browser, which is exactly why the guides disagree with each other. Chrome and Firefox both ship with Google in the list, so it is a dropdown and nothing more. Edge is the awkward one - it only offers engines you have actually visited, so if Google is not in the list, load google.com once, go back into the settings, and it will be sitting there. On a phone it lives inside the browser app rather than in the phone's own settings, which is where most people give up looking.