Google doesn't mean to read your mind, but help you perhaps get to your search results faster with typing less

Its fine for some who dont want to type and get their results. I can and know what I want to search. I dont like being told what I should be searching for. I know what I am searching for better than google.

Why do you even search on google.com ( or whatever ) when almost all browsers (or all ? ) support searching from the address bar :|

I dont know if browsers support address bar searching. I only know Chrome does that. But it only uses google search for that and obviously so. I have not tried with Mozilla FF. If that works, well and good. But I still like to use search engine.

I just checked with Mozilla FF, and it too uses google search within address bar search even though the default search engine is DuckDuckGo.

Flash block will stop it "reading your mind" and stop it from bringing up various search options while you are typing. It is how I stop it from doing it. I think it was Craigevil also suggested Adblock+ with Easylist. These are simple measures you can use to stop annoying features and also help block other things that may make pages load slower than you would like.

Installed FlashBlock and AdBlock Plus. But that does not stop google from suggesting me with auto completion. I think this is done using java script or jquery and I need to block google from running the JS.

Okay. NoScript add on at least blocks the auto completion and suggestion. I think this should solve the issue. Now I would like to look into the proxying the requests so that google does not my location and whereabouts.

Sorry about that, you are right it is no script.

I'm in the same boat as you. I've switched to duckduckgo but the one thing I miss is Google images. if duckduckgo had an image search I'd never use Google again. I switched mainly because of privacy reasons, but I have a feeling the comfort I now have may just be pseudo-comfort because Firefox still shows other websights trying to track me and make profiles. it blocks them, but i think theres more that go unseen because the adds that show up on Facebook are strangely suited to me.

You can tell google to not give you suggestions and also not to track you and your search history, but you do need to make an account there.

See Search Settings here: https://www.google.com/preferences?hl=en&authuser=0

Maybe that link doesn't work correctly, if not:
Login to your google account
Upper right corner: Click on the arrow next to your picture
Click on "Account"
Last item on page: Click on "Visit the Search settings page."
Change settings to your likings
Click on the "Web History" link there, click on "Pause" and click on "Remove all history"
All done...

Paranoid mode: Do you trust google accepts your choices and doesn't secretly track you anyway?

In FF, default address bar search goes to google. You can change this.

Use duckdugo or dogpile.

Use duckduckgo or ixquick/startpage - I use both - I don't use google or any of their services or "products".

Making a google account just to disable the annoying tracking related stuff is a somewhat pointless exercise.

google's autocomplete/search suggestions thing is javascript, so noscript, will stop it, but won't stop google tracking you. Likewise blocking cookies, using ghostery, adblock, etc, won't stop google recording your searches with any other information it can get, storing them and building up a profile of you. Even if you don't care about your privacy you should still care about your searching habits being "bubbled".

I use firefox with the following add ons:

BetterPrivacy
Ghostery
HTTPS-Everywhere
NoScript
RequestPolicy

I also disable all of the google safebrowsing referers and address bar search in about:config and remove it from the installed search engines.

I do not use adblock plus or a tinfoil hat.

Go to search settings and turn instant off?

I don't use google much since the day it began to act autocratic. There are meta searchers who still understands what you wanted it to do.

Metacrawler

Altavista (goes to Yahoo but does very good.

Hotbot uses google but rejects the latter's stupidity.

Excite also

Teoma, Lycos, Yahoo, Dogpile, etc.

And if you want to be free don't use chrome.