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You're using a rifle. Here's a shotgun:
Left Barrel: http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/scraper.htm
Right Barrel: http://www.scroogle.org/scraper7.html

I stopped using google. Here are some alternatives:

Scroogle (uses Google)
Clusty

I started using Clusty a few months ago. It does a good job, though occasionally I can't find something with it. In those rare situations I use Scroogle.

it's here: scroogle.org

You seem to be implying that scroogle is well known, but I never heard of it before today, and would wager that if I asked fifty random people on the street I'd get fifty likewise "never heard of it" shrugs. More importantly, you seem to be implying that scroogle is trustable. Why? Because it has a website claiming it doesn't keep logs? What mechanism do I have to verify that that is true now, and remains true in the future? What if the site owner is in fact running a psych experiment to see what information people worried about privacy search for when they think they're not being watched? What if the site owner is compelled by court order to (a) keep and turn over logs, and (b) not disclose that fact publicly? What if keeping logs becomes irrelevant if someone starts sniffing traffic between me and scroogle?

And in addition to all of the above, don't forget about the pedestrian yet show-stopping possibility that scroogle could have its ip range banned by google, or simply run out of server bandwidth if it becomes too popular.

Note that none of these problems apply to the solution I've proposed.

Umm indeed.

Umm... http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/scraper.htm

To me, one of the biggest threats to privacy is google's logging of what I search for.

Try the Scroogle. It returns Google's results without ads and other features provided Google and they don't save search results. And you can even add the scraper to your Firefox search bar...

http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/scraper.htm/

I have successfully ungoogled myself. I use Scroogle for search, if I have to. I have found that Wikipedia is a good alterternative for much of my search-engine use anyway. I bookmark more, instead of using Google as my DNS. I've gone back to using a News-Reader for Usenet.

Any other suggestions?

'Deleting the cookie' does nothing to remove your stored search history crosslinked to your IP address

Having a dynamic IP does not help if you use your computer regularly to check email, log in to slashdot, or visit your unique collection of news sites: anything that can link your particular IP-of-the-day to your identity.

Oh, but there's more. It's not just searches. Just today I noticed that Google is serving css and javascript from www.google.com for third-party sites such as blogs.

So in other words, they can track you across the web unless you foil this too. Prior to this, you could avoid being tracked from site to site by (a) controlling cookies (I never allow beyond-current-session cookies for any site, ever) and (b) black-holing advertising and tracking sites including pagead2.google.com and google analytics, etc.. But now it's either filter www.google.com too, and not have access to their main site; or leave it unfiltered and let Google map all your searches to your IP *plus* the fact that you visit site A, then site B etc. (maybe even what you do there, if they're using XmlHTTPRequest to the max).

So now the practical privacy protection is use the kind of solution the link in the story recommends (FF extension) or maybe searching via something like blackboxsearch or scroogle.

The better solution would be a way to selectively block third-party accessory files - JS, CSS, images ( blacklist/whitelist and 3rd party vs. current site). The Mozilla browsers have an option to disallow third-party images but it doesn't work. Users also need control over XmlHTTPRequest, including optional notification of when it is used, option to turn it off (it's supposed to be same-site-only but iframes are a big loophole).

Use the Google scraper at http://www.scroogle.org/

http://scroogle.org/

Try the Scroogle Scraper. No Google cookie,
No Google search tied to your IP address.
No advertizements. While you're there, donate.

There are a handful of pages that proxy to google... for example.

http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/scraper.htm Solved the search bit for you.

`We are moving to a Google that knows more about you.'

Hmm.. I do think that this is getting a bit out of hand now. I'm glad that some of "them" do resist the calls for information, but for how long ? After all, most resources are controlled by the government and they're capable of putting an enormous amount of pressure on said corporations.

I don't quite understand the US governments crusade against online porn and for child protection. Is it just a ploy to gain votes ? It's however scary to see such a breach of privacy, even if on a small scale. IMO, this could grow into things much bigger.

I work with online advertising (read that I have a couple of websites..), and I want to share something with my fellow slashdotters. Many of you must have heard of/seen Google Adsense. Well, MS's response to that, MSN Adcenter launched in Beta a few months ago and I've been working with that. One look inside that interface and it is shocking to see the kind of targetting they're capable of. If they can target so well, they obviously have an ENORMOUS amount of information on folks on the internet. Just an example of their penetration, you can choose to target to "Unmarried Men in the age group of 30-35 in the state of New York with incomes in the rage of $100,000". (We all know what those ads are ;)) I saw this and was like "WHAT ?! How the hell are they supposed to have so much information on a person who's just opened a website to see some stuff.."

Well, my point is that all this information that lies with MSN, Google, etc. CAN be accessed by the government, and as an individual worried about my privacy, this is alarming.

I think it's time we all scroogled. (and no, this is not a promotional post :))

If you are concerned about Google's records of your searches, use Scroogle (http://www.scroogle.org/scraper.html) instead.

"We are moving to a Google that knows more about you." -- Google CEO Eric Schmidt, speaking to financial analysts, February 9, 2005, as quoted in the New York Times the next day.

I use scroogle a lot: http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/scraper.htm

It searches Google for you but doesn't give them more information about me. Not that they don't already know way too much...

I have no reason to not trust Google. However, I also don't have any reason to trust them. And I generally don't trust anyone, specially if they employ (former, but as we all know nobody really leaves the intelligence community) NSA people and almost brag about how much information they are collecting about their users.

It's like.. They slam in your face WE ARE BIG BROTHER and then add BUT IT'S ALL GOOD, YOU SEE; WE'RE NOT EVIL! Honestly!

These guys proxy Google and claim to keep no permanent records.

Just one more reason to use the Scroogle scraper.

The Form 990 for 2004 has been released by Mozilla Foundation. They consider their $4.4 million in income from "search revenues" (apparently this is all from Google) to be part of their exempt function or purpose.

The IRS considers any advertising income realized by a nonprofit to be "unrelated business income" and subject to taxes. Question: What's in the contract with Google that Mozilla signed in 2004? Is it based on AdWords percentages? Opera's 2005 contract with Google works this way, so I assume that Mozilla's contract with Google does also.

Even if unrelated to AdWords, the fact remains that doing any sort of business with Google, which is an ad agency (99 percent of Google's income is from advertising), means that income from Google is unrelated to any nonprofit, exempt function or purpose.

And it's definitely not a donation. A charitable contribution requires that no goods or services are exchanged. The money passed from Google to Mozilla does not qualify as a contribution, because Google has received substantial benefit from the association.

Naughty Mozilla Foundation. They should pay their taxes.

A copy of Mozilla's 2004 Form 990 is available at http://www.scroogle.org/mozilla.html

Scroogle has no adds, no cookies, and all the results from google.

The guy might be a hypocrite, but he does have a nice quick proxy to the Google search engine.

'... Even the CEO shared an office at Google for several months after he arrived. ...'

What was the last time you read a CEO`s penned article for a Magazine?

Try Scroogle. http://www.scroogle.org/ Why? http://www.scroogle.org/gscrape.html Alternately, use Clusty, a metasearch http://www.clusty.com/ Clusty even has a plugin for your Mozilla/Firefox search box http://clusty.com/toolbar/mozilla

Try Scroogle. http://www.scroogle.org/ Why? http://www.scroogle.org/gscrape.html Alternately, use Clusty, a metasearch http://www.clusty.com/ Clusty even has a plugin for your Mozilla/Firefox search box http://clusty.com/toolbar/mozilla

Use Scroogle -- it calls google for you so you get google's results but without ads and you stay anonymous! Google is Big Brother, with banner ads, with censorship. GOOGLE IS EVIL. There are many recorded reasons. Hiring all those microsoft employees is only going to make them more evil. http://www.scroogle.org/ // ALF GORE // http://www.newsoftheday.com/algore

Screw google and use http://www.scroogle.org/.

You can block googleAds in firefox as well! (see the cyan bit at the bottom).

Use Scroogle then if your afraid of Google's cookies.

I'm considering Google as a broken search engine.

SandBox, overating links - link farm impact, hilltop oligarchy, big sites oligarchy, 2x32 double index as not able to go on 64Bit therefore sites dumped in secondary index, 301 redirects not working, 302 page hijacking...

There are a lot of faults they have to be blamed for doing nothing to solve it out.

But the sandbox massacre is a real crime they are responsible for to the Web community:

They dump about a year now 90 % of the new opened domains into a secondary index (mainly its assumed tha G$$gle is be not able to go over the 32 Bit barrier for siteids as all money is pumped in opening new shops and not in the core bussines SE) and thus never pop up in top SERPs. But as well a lot of this sites would in Googles normal algo if not Google would filter them out.

They block 1 year of 10 Internet year - what a crime!

Try this to see unfiltered results:

keyword keyword -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf -asdf

Or see all the great new domains filtered out for your keywords here.

Try this

A CSS file can be used in Firefox to block Google's ads. Complete instructions are here at the bottom of the page. Google approves if you do this. After all, their toolbar blocks pop-ups. And Firefox has great cookie control. If you don't want to block Google's cookie because you use Gmail or other services that require it, you can turn that 2038 cookie into a session cookie. That way Google gives you a new unique ID with every session, instead of one ID that lasts until 2038.

I've scroogled for the following:
- world conquest (0 missing)
- pr0n (0 missing)
- evil (0 missing)
- microsoft (0 missing)
- computers (16 missing -- all crap)
- end of the internet (4 missing - 3 crap)
- lpetrazickis (0 missing)
- deviancy (0 missing)
- PNG 256x256 icons (2 missing - all crap)
- jargon file (0 missing)
- bofh (0 missing)
- unix humor (1 missing - all crap)
Excuse me for not crying.

In the last week, Google did a change to their algorithms which effectively eliminated most of the top-rated businesses from search results.

It has been suggested that they are doing this to force businesses to use Adwords so that their valuation can be increased in the IPO.

What apparently happened was that for any keywords which are actively bid for in Adwords, Google applied a filter making it very hard for legitimate businesses to get any ranking in normal search results.

Here is an application which was built to show the difference between current and previous results (before the new keywords filters were applied by Google) www.scroogle.org/.

This message has some good data and a summary of the argument.

What makes this so worrying is that Google made its reputation on objectively good search results. If they are now distorting results in pursuit of cash, they're LESS objective than search engines which have explicit pay for placement, like Overture: in those search engines you can at least see which results are paid for and which are actually real.

Farewell Google. We hardly knew ye.