You don’t have to follow Edward Snowden’s revelations to be concerned about your privacy on the Internet. Anytime you use Google as a search engine, you are providing deeply personal information to a company that is not known for its commitment to free speech and liberty. In fact, such data mining is how they earn their billions…at least it’s the one public way we know.
Instead, I use Startpage for my searches, a site I found about from something I read a while back at LewRockwell.com.
And the reason I do is succinctly explained by Startpage:
Every time you use a regular search engine, your search data is recorded. Major search engines capture your IP address and use tracking cookies to make a record of your search terms, the time of your visit, and the links you choose—then they store that information in a giant database.