If you don't know much about computers or data mining, you would probably be shocked at how much Google knows about you. Consider that whenever you are logged into your google account, whether that be gmail/reader/g-toolbar/Youtube/Chrome etc. everything that you do online is recorded and stored. Even if you aren't logged in, Google still collects, saves and stores all your searches by IP address.
Think about the fact that Google has saved everything you have ever done w/relation to Google products and aggregated them based on your account or IP. For most of you, this probably is getting close to 10 years of activity. If you ever study data mining, you will see how easy it is for people in analytics to piece together who you are and what you are like even if they don't have explicitly identifying information like a name.
Even if Google is a pretty benign "Do no Evil" company right now, you can't rely on the fact that they will be 20 years in the future as corporate pressure forces them to bow more and more to shareholder profits. Yahoo was a pretty cool company as well when it started 15 years ago; now they are notorious for caving in at the first sign of any legal pressure because they want business. The most notorious case was when they gave up the email accounts and search history of several Chinese human rights and corruption journalists to the Chinese Communist Party; these guys got sentenced for "incitement to subvert state power" and recieved 10 years in prison. If Kimdotcom or Julian Assange used something like Yahoo, they'd be a lot more fucked than they are now.
duckduckgo.com is a search engine that was built from the ground up with privacy in mind; the quality of results is pretty good. Google search is awesome, but most of the time you don't need an engine that good unless you are looking for something very specific. I'd suggest setting duckduckgo as your homepage to get into the habit of using it. If you are looking for something specific/obscure and don't get the results you want from duckduckgo, just append your search with "!g" (ex. !g asian midgit threesomes in vegas) and you will automatically get google search results instead.
hxxp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_Duck_Go
hxxp://duckduckgo.com/
hxxp://dontbubble.us/
Think about the fact that Google has saved everything you have ever done w/relation to Google products and aggregated them based on your account or IP. For most of you, this probably is getting close to 10 years of activity. If you ever study data mining, you will see how easy it is for people in analytics to piece together who you are and what you are like even if they don't have explicitly identifying information like a name.
Even if Google is a pretty benign "Do no Evil" company right now, you can't rely on the fact that they will be 20 years in the future as corporate pressure forces them to bow more and more to shareholder profits. Yahoo was a pretty cool company as well when it started 15 years ago; now they are notorious for caving in at the first sign of any legal pressure because they want business. The most notorious case was when they gave up the email accounts and search history of several Chinese human rights and corruption journalists to the Chinese Communist Party; these guys got sentenced for "incitement to subvert state power" and recieved 10 years in prison. If Kimdotcom or Julian Assange used something like Yahoo, they'd be a lot more fucked than they are now.
duckduckgo.com is a search engine that was built from the ground up with privacy in mind; the quality of results is pretty good. Google search is awesome, but most of the time you don't need an engine that good unless you are looking for something very specific. I'd suggest setting duckduckgo as your homepage to get into the habit of using it. If you are looking for something specific/obscure and don't get the results you want from duckduckgo, just append your search with "!g" (ex. !g asian midgit threesomes in vegas) and you will automatically get google search results instead.
hxxp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_Duck_Go
hxxp://duckduckgo.com/
hxxp://dontbubble.us/