Un-Google Your Searches Writer #1, 2012-02-27 Depending on your level of purism, devotion to privacy, and reason for hopping off the surveillance grid, the non-Google solution that appeals to you will vary. For those who are hooked on Google’s results, there are options that mask you from Google, making your search basically anonymous. For those who don’t want to “feed” Google their inner most thoughts, there are complete non-Google solutions for searching, that work quite well. I’ve been using one for weeks now. Although Bing (which means “Bing Is Not Google”) is not Google, it’s yet another techno-monster that is just as dangerous as Google. Because of that, Bing is not included as a viable alternative. DuckDuckGo.com Yes, duck duck go. If you haven’t heard of it, the name may sound silly, but it’s a pretty solid and private search engine. You can get to their secure site by going to https://duckduckgo.com/. What’s so great about Duck Duck Go? They don’t track you and don’t bubble you. http://donttrack.us/ http://dontbubble.us/ Those are humorous pages and quick reads that make the point quite well. They put privacy first and give you real results that are not altered to match what you will agree with. Instead, they give you results that cater to the search terms (not you). Finally, they don’t sent out your search terms to the site that you click on, also known as “search leakage”. Ask.com Previously known as “AskJeeves.com”, ask.com is the one that I’ve used for a few weeks now with excellent results (no pun intended). It’s clean, fast, and gives good results. Also, they have the “ask eraser“, which means that they erase your search history. Of course, you’re just taking their word for it, but that’s always the case. Scroogle.org Discontinued. Sorry 🙁 StartPage.com StartPage.com uses Google but shields you from them. Basically, you hand over your search terms to StartPage and they go to Google for you and return the results. It’s nice, but it’s not truly un-Google-ing your life, and it continues to feed the giant the food it loves…. data! IxQuick.com IxQuick.com is simliar to StartPage.com in that it acts as a proxy to protect you from the search giants, but IxQuick.com uses more than Google. It uses ask.com, yahoo.com, and google.com. Again, it’s protecting you individually but it’s still feeding the giant. Setting Your Search Engine in Chromium The beauty of Chromium is when you type a search term in your address bar and it uses the search engine of your choice to search. How do you set that up? 1. click on your settings wrench. 2. Go to “Preferences” and click “Manage Search Engines”. 3. You’re going to need to know the exact URL to type in for the search engine that you pick, so do a search and copy the URL that comes up after the search completes. You’ll use that URL in a second. 4. Notice where you add a new search engine. It says to replace the search query with “%s”. So, DuckDuckGo.com would be “https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%s”. 5. Next, make the new search engine default by clicking “Make Default”. 6. You win! Now your web address bar searches will go to your new search engine. Random Awesomeness Technology alternative to googleask.comaskjeevesduckduckgoixquicknongoogleprivacyprivate searchscrooglestartpageungoogle
There’s another alternative engine out there. htpp://UnGoogle.org provides advice and some services like search and sometimes even removal of unwanted information on the web. Reply