First I'd like to say what a great forum. In lite of recent ..shall I say .. "issues" with google and privacy of the www I looked at alternative search engines. However, what is your experience and do you even trust them? .. like "https://www.ixquick.com/" .. or others?

I've been using DuckDuckGo.com (https://www.duckduckgo.com) for a while now, and I trust them for a couple reasons.

1) Their search results do not appear to be altered to suit my previous search entries. You don't register, and deleting cookies would eliminate past search entries, plus my IP address is assigned via DHCP, so it'd be really hard for them to build any kind of search history on me. On top of that, they've actually produced some educational literature.
- We Don't Track You! - http://donttrack.us/
- We Don't Bubble You! - http://dontbubble.us/
- DuckDuckGo Privacy Policy - http://duckduckgo.com/privacy.html

2) I have communicated directly with the founder through his personal e-mail account, and he has e-mailed me back personally. I didn't get a secretary or some generic auto-response, I got a legitimate message from him to answer my questions.

All in all I don't despise Google, it's just a different approach to searching for information on the internet.

I use Startpage (ixquick in the UK) and have done so for several years with no issues.

Have anyone tried http://www.mamma.com/ ?

Another vote for duckduckgo. It's even the default search engine in Linux Mint now.

duckduckgo

Moved: This thread is more suitable in <GENERAL> and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

clusty.com

I also use duckduckgo, it has gotten better over time. I never use Google anymore, except maybe the image search rarely.

when you search for something private, you are sharing that private search not only with your search engine, but also with all the sites that you clicked on (for that search).