Have you heard of Scroogle? This is a search interface — created by the non-profit org google-watch. Put in your search term into the “google scraper” (there’s also one available for yahoo!), scroogle searches google, and returns google results WITHOUT ads, WITHOUT cookies and WITHOUT search term records (their access log is deleted within 48 hours whereas google keeps this information FOREVER!). Check it out!

As a side note, there’s been a lot of talk lately about google and the ethics of their aiding in Chinese censorship. See the boingboing story for more background.

Since 2000, Google has recorded your search terms, the date-time of each search, the globally-unique ID in your cookie (it expires in 2038), and your IP address. This information is available to governments on request. (From the Scroogle Web site)

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4. What Search terms don’t have Google ads?
5. How Search Engines Re-write the Past