Startpage

Agreed. Google improved the internet with excellent search results; Startpage takes us to the next logical step - relevant search results MINUS the privacy intrusions. Google actually has the resources to send out cars and photograph whole city streets - if your government did the same, would it be OK with you? Think about that...

Google actually has the resources to send out cars and photograph whole city streets - if your government did the same, would it be OK with you? Think about that...

Well, that's probably not the perfect analogy. I wouldn't care about the government photographing city streets-- after all, it was the government that built those streets in the first place. But I get what you're saying. Search engines that emphasize privacy should become more popular.

Yeah I guess I got on a bit of a rant there. The real issue is that I'm shocked (frightened) not just with how much data Google collects, but how comfortable people are with handing over that info voluntarily. Google (and facebook et al) capitalizes on how LITTLE we as users value privacy and anonymity. I think we've seen lots of good things come about from the big G, but we're reaching the point where we're trading off more than we really should. It's a gray area and everyone will have a different "point of no return".

The creator of Duckduckgo (another awesome search engine) summarized this really well in an essay he wrote at http://donttrack.us/ , which I think every web reader should read.